Not Giving Refund For My Exam That Keep On Getting Cancelled

[Patatomashed]

Im a private candidate and I payed an exam centre to let me sit my a levels . They are not allowing me to defer my exams which got scrapped due to Covid a second time. I asked to get a refund for my payment and they said they won’t be giving that to me and I can’t move my exam to the autumn series so that I can sit an actual exam rather then be assessed unfairly via zoom. The only thing I can do is withdraw but I won’t get a refund . I don’t know what to do

[Buenchico]

The problem is that the exam centre acted as a middleman between you and the examination board, passing your payment onto that board (although they might have added their own fee on top for actually providing you with a venue at which to take the exam). The exam centre will only have received a quarter of the examination fee back from the board
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/boards-return-just-25-of-fees-for-cancelled-exams/
so they're not in a position to refund the full fee to you.

You need to get a breakdown of the amount that you paid, so that you know how much was actually going to the exam centre itself and how much was going to the examination board. (You should be able to find out what the actual examination fee was by simply looking at the board's website. You can then subtract that from your payment to see how much the exam centre was charging you for providing the facility to sit the exam).

You should then be able to argue for the repayment of the 'facility' fee (since it was never provided to you) and for the quarter of the actual examination fee that the centre received back from the board (since the centre was acting as your agent when it transferred that element of your payment to the board).

However I can't see any way that you will be able to get a refund of the entire payment, unless someone makes a successful legal challenge to the exam board's decision to only refund a quarter of the fee. (Given that examination boards are not-for-profit institutions, registered as charities, who are legally obliged to ensure that their finances don't go into the red, I can't see that happening).

[Peter Pedant]

examination boards behave like this Chris and get away with it
weak regulation
because you pay you take an exam and they tell you if you have passed

what can go wrong with that for chrissakes

young people who can ill afford it are getting ripped off - Mr Mark Farrar are you listening ?