Century said:
Processing fee is non-refundable.
My view on CC blockage: It is extremely unethical. CIO got the right to charge once they process your application - it is denying their fees after they rendered you the service. If CC lost, it is something unintentional. But advising to block CC is devilish suggestion. However, anybody can send letter to CIO to withdraw his/her application before it is processed. In that case, it is CIO's discretion whether the application will be processed or not. To me, they should not process it.
Referring to Section 5.3 of the manual for Application received after May 4, 2013, (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/op/ op06c-eng.pdf.....) you can, on the contrary request for refund of your cost recovery fee before they determine your eligibility. To extract that statement, I copied it below:
The cost recovery fee is payable at the time the application is made to the CIO. An applicant may withdraw an application and receive a refund of the cost recovery fee at any time before processing of the application begins at the CIO. This rule also applies to applications that are not eligible for processing according to the Ministerial Instructions. Once processing has begun at the CIO, the cost recovery fee is not refundable.
Note: For the Federal Skilled Worker Class, processing starts with a positive determination of eligibility for processing at the CIO following assessment against the criteria of applicable Ministerial Instructions. In order to be eligible to receive a refund of the cost recovery fee, an applicant must request a withdrawal of their application before this determination of eligibility for processing has been made. If an applicant requests a change in immigration class at any time, a new application and new cost recovery fee must be submitted. An applicant may have more than one application in process at a given time, but only one application can be finalized with visa issuance. Any additional applications must therefore be finalized as withdrawn or refused.
My take on blocking the card as unethical and devilish, is if you are actually denying the recipient a payment of a service that they deserve. Totally true and I completely agree.
But in some cases and if done properly, i.e. writing to CIO about withdrawal request and sent/received as per their given time frame, I believe that they should not even bother going to the part of opening your paper let alone going to the payment page, hence no service had been done to your application. But should their procedure still requires them to take the payment anyway, the card blocking will save them from a lot more trouble of going through the refund process.
I don't know, I could be wrong, but I'm just saying.
