Float, allowance, cutoff
Three accounts sit behind one wallet and they behave differently. Funded balance never expires and is spent first in the order the settlement shows; refund credit carries a window measured from the day the refund settles; and promotional credit expires on a fixed date printed when it was issued. On our £40 order record the settled total was £48.75, of which £6.09 arrived as credit after one item was substituted.
1. Open the wallet history rather than the order page, because the two show different running totals. 2. Note the issue date of every credit line. 3. Write the expiry date beside the credit when it lands, because the wallet list does not sort by expiry.
Split the settled total into rows before planning around any credit, because only two of the five rows on our £120 self-purchase record travel back: goods £84.60 and international freight £20.00 (Recorded), while packaging £3.50 and a service fee of £6.13, charged at 6% of goods plus domestic freight, sit inside the same settled £108.34 (Recorded). Then note the coupling that catches people out, since a refund returning goods alone leaves that fee untouched, and on our £40 record the settled £48.75 sat about 22% above the goods value (Recorded). Build an expiry ladder instead of trusting the wallet total: list every credit line beside its posting date, then subtract the observed posting lag, which ran 3 days or less on 9 of 14 recorded credit events and up to 11 days on the other 5 (Recorded). Set the planning date from the slowest lag you have seen rather than the fastest, because a credit that appears late has already spent part of its window. When two credits end on different dates, tag the earlier one to the parcel it has to pay for first and leave the later credit for the next consignment.
A repayment lands
The clock on credit starts when the refund settles rather than when you paid, and the gap between those two moments is what costs people. Across 14 recorded credit events the credit landed within 3 days on 9 of them and took up to 11 days on the remaining 5, so a refund that appears to have a 90-day window had 79 days left by the time it arrived in the worst case.
1. Note the date you requested the refund and the date it settled. 2. Compute the remaining days against the window your wallet shows. 3. If fewer than 30 days remain, plan the next order around the credit rather than around the item.
Reconcile every landed refund against the freight tier it was priced from, because a re-weigh is the one lever that reliably pushes money back into credit. Our recorded tier table prices 3.8 kg at £26.40 and 3 kg at £19.60, so a re-weigh that succeeds across that step returns £6.80 of freight (Recorded), yet the same half-kilogram argument inside a plateau returns nothing at all, since 8 kg and 8.5 kg both sit at £43.60 and 10 kg and 11.5 kg both sit at £54.60 (Recorded). Read the billed weight on the refund line, match it against the boundaries at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 10 kg, and request the re-weigh only when the parcel sits just above one of them. Photograph the parcel on your own scale before the inbound scan, since volumetric weight is length × width × height divided by 5000, 6000 or 8000 and rounded up to the next 0.5 kg, with the larger of the two weights billed. If a refund arrives as promotional credit rather than refund credit, its end date is fixed on issue and does not follow the parcel, so spend it ahead of the refund credit you are holding.
A fractional repayment
A partial refund returns part of the goods value and none of the freight, which is why a small refund looks generous per item and thin per order. On a £40 basket with £8.60 of freight, a refund covering the full £15.20 item returns 38% of the goods value and 31% of the settled total.
1. Read the refund line and identify which rows it covers. 2. Check whether the freight row is included before you spend the credit. 3. If freight is excluded, treat the credit as a goods-only figure and expect a second payment to cover delivery of the replacement.
Sequence the credit you hold against the parcels you genuinely expect, because a 90-day window measured against the wrong delivery figure is where most of it disappears from reach. Our 24 recorded UK parcels, dated 2026-08-01 to 2026-09-30, give line medians from 8 days on a line carrying 4 parcels to 19 days on a line carrying 3 (Recorded), so a parcel on the slower line burns about a fifth of the window before it lands. Match each live credit to the parcel it will pay for on a single line, and hold a reserve for whichever credit expires first rather than spreading the total evenly across the window. Raise any quality query in explicit wording, since our 6 recorded re-shoot requests came back in 6 hours when the wording was specific and in about 2 days when it was vague (Recorded). Treat quality credit as uncertain until a flag is confirmed, because of 23 recorded flags across 85 curated entries 6 concerned edges or borders and 5 of those 6 turned out to be lighting artefacts rather than faults (Recorded), so a hoped-for credit is not a funding plan you can put a date on.
A float stales
Money funded into the balance is not credit and does not expire, but it does carry the exchange rate from the day you funded it. On our £120 order record the goods row moved about £1.10 between two rate snapshots taken nine days apart, which is more than the entire credit earned on a £40 order.
1. Note the funding date and rate beside the balance. 2. If the balance has sat unused for more than three weeks, compare the rate you have against the current one before you spend it. 3. Spend an old balance on goods and pay any new freight from a fresh top-up, so the stale rate only touches the smaller row.
Once the window lapses, a credit stops behaving like money and starts behaving like evidence, so switch from spending to documenting every date you can still prove. Storage is the cost that lands first, because the free window runs from the inbound scan and overstay has been reported by the community at £0.20 per item per day (Community-reported), with 8 of 24 items overstaying between 1 and 14 days and the longest single item reaching roughly £2.80. Weigh that accrual against the credit you lost, since a 10-day overstay on one item costs about £2.00 and seldom justifies an escalation by itself. Log every code refused while your credit was still live, because 2 codes were refused inside the window with no reason given and stay Not verified, and keep the weight basis with the parcel, because 3 of 12 recorded rate re-checks dated 2026-08-01 to 2026-10-02 never stated a volumetric divisor (Not verified). Note also that 4 same-line first-weight rises, the largest +£1.60 (Recorded), leave a credit valued at an older snapshot short of the invoice in front of you.
90 daymarks fall short
Ninety days is long enough for three parcels and short enough to lose if your orders move slowly. Our recorded parcel timeline runs 11 days at the floor and 42 days at the ceiling from payment to delivery, so three consecutive orders at the slower end consume the whole window before the third one is settled.
1. Count how many orders you expect to place inside the window. 2. Multiply by your own median delivery time rather than the fastest one. 3. If the total exceeds 80 days, move the credit onto the first order rather than saving it for a larger basket.
The aperture lapses
An expired credit is not recoverable and does not convert into balance, so the only defence is a written record of the date you tried to use it. Keep the settlement attempt and the wallet history together; if a credit was live when you started the settlement and refused when you finished it, that pair of screenshots is the whole case.
1. Attempt the settlement while the credit still shows time remaining rather than on the last day. 2. Screenshot the wallet line and the settlement screen together. 3. If the credit is refused, query it with both images on the same day rather than after the expiry date has passed.
The data point behind this note
Across 14 recorded credit events, a credit landed within 3 days on 9 and took up to 11 days on the other 5, so a 90-day window had as little as 79 days left when the credit appeared; our parcel timeline runs 11 to 42 days from payment to delivery (Recorded).
Rates last checked 2026-10-02. Where a figure is community-reported we say so; where we could not verify it, we write Not verified instead of estimating.