Refundable, they said.

Half of these cases are money genuinely being withheld and half are a hold that was never money leaving at all, and the statement tells you which case you are in before you write a word.

Read this first

A hold that never came back may never have left

Most incidentals deposits are authorisation holds: the amount is ring-fenced against your available balance and no money moves. When the property releases it, nothing arrives, because nothing left — the ring-fencing simply lapses, on a timescale your issuer controls and the property does not. So before writing to anyone, look at the statement. A hold that has already expired needs no letter. A hold still pinned weeks later needs the property to send its acquirer a release. A posted charge with no matching refund is money being withheld. Call your issuer, confirm which of the three you are looking at, and ask for the dispute deadline if it is the third. Ten minutes, and it decides which letter you write.

What you are owed

The deposit back, unless they can evidence a deduction

A deposit secures the property against specific losses. It is not a tip. Any deduction from it is an assertion until they produce something — dated photographs, an inspection report, an itemised invoice for the repair or the cleaning. Ask for the evidence in writing before you argue about the amount, because a deduction that cannot be evidenced is usually returned rather than defended.

A date and a reference, not a department

If they say it has been refunded, ask for the date the refund was processed and the transaction reference. Your issuer can trace a real refund from a reference in days. It has been passed to accounts is not a refund; it is a sentence, and the reply to it is a deadline.

The dispute route while you wait

If the deposit was genuinely charged and has not come back, that is a completed transaction you can dispute, and the window runs from the charge date, not from the day you gave up waiting. Tell the property in writing the date you will file, and file on it. If it was only ever a hold, there is nothing to dispute — which is the reason to establish which it was first.

How they will refuse, and what answers it

“It was released from our side.”

Then the date and the reference exist, so ask for both. With a reference your issuer can find the release or confirm it never arrived, and either way the conversation stops being about whose side the problem is on.

“It was retained for damage.”

Retained on what evidence? Ask for dated photographs, the inspection report and the itemised invoice, and note whether you were present for any inspection or told at checkout. A deduction disclosed for the first time when you chase your own money, with nothing behind it, is the weakest version of the claim they can make.

“Deposit refunds take up to thirty days.”

Note the date they said it and the date their thirty days expires, hold them to their own number, and state in writing what happens the day after it does. A stated timescale is a commitment you can enforce — theirs, not yours.

Gather this before you write

Your card statement showing the deposit as it appears — pending hold or posted charge — with dates and amounts
The booking terms or check-in paperwork stating the deposit amount and the conditions for keeping it
The checkout folio, showing a zero balance or the deduction as they recorded it
Any written claim of damage or deduction, and the evidence they produced for it
Photographs of the room as you left it, if you took them
Your issuer's confirmation of what it can see, and the dispute deadline if a charge posted

Now make them answer.

Tell us what happened in your own words. We write the letters, set the deadlines, and email each escalation on the day it is due.