Not true at all. If you live in a country without customer protection, sure, but most rich countries have some customer protection office you can reach out to. Hence, the country matters a lot.
In my country, by law, any company has the obligation to provide you with a form for such a claim if you ask for it. You fill the form, keep a copy, they keep another, you submit yours to the government, they are supposed to submit theirs as well, (they break the law if they don't) and an arbitration process begins. In a case like this, they have no chance of winning, and companies will try to avoid at all costs having to go through this process. It's easy to get fired if you create a situation where a customer gets arbitration and wins against your company (not this case as it seems company policy to try to get away with not returning the money instead of a one employee fucking up, but still, they'd want to avoid this at all costs).