AE Claiming They Didn’t Receive My Return

Hey y’all, I ordered a couple items and decided to return them. Got the refund approved, then life got in the way so I didn’t drop them in the mailbox till the last day of the return window (my fault, I know). It was a weekend, so the post office scanned them in a day or two later.

In the meantime, AE automatically closed my returns for not being sent back within the return window. I messaged customer support and explained the situation, and they said it was fine - just reach out with the tracking info once the returns are marked as delivered, and they’d process the refund.

They were delivered (to AE’s local UK warehouse, using AE’s own return labels), and I reached back out with pictures of the tracking info, etc. They said they’d pass it on to a “senior team”, who would review and get back to me. The next morning, I get the email below from them, saying the packages weren’t delivered, and so the refund can’t be approved unless I can provide “official delivery provement” (lol) - something I already provided when I made the request.

I reached out to live chat again, and they said me through the same process only to get the same response - this repeated four separate times.

It’s obvious that the live chat people have a very proscribed process they need to follow, which isn’t working to address this, and the emails are coming from a no-reply address so I can’t speak to someone with any authority.

I know I’ll probably just have to dispute these with my credit card company. But before I do, has anyone else encountered this / do any of you have any suggestions on how to get this escalated and resolved?

Thanks so much!