Well on my side, I do think you can!
It all depends on the shop policies as said before but they were a couple of times when I really think I was being cheated so I asked for a refund.
The first time was in a shop, specialized in rather mature women.
They had a special event going on, at an extremely attractive price, so it got me in the mood.
Paid the fare, chose a girl out of laminated plastic cards (as you all know they all look great so better check on the shop's daily blog if they have one) and waited in the reception lounge.
The girl that showed up was for sure not the one I picked up. We're not talking about height, weight, appearance or so on. Just a total different girl in every way
So I politely explained to the guys at the reception desk that it wasn't the girl I had asked for and they of course pretended they had made a mistake (right)...
As I was motivated to leave, asking for my money back, they actually offered me a small discount and I picked up another girl.
End of the story (and actually pretty good time afterward).
Second time was a bit more traumatizing.
I was out with a very good friend of mine, that for sure wanted to have a good time. It must have been around 7pm and we were both sober (I always go mongering sober to avoid problems btw).
Entered a shop, picked up two girls based on their huge respective breasts (and waist size, always check that combo
) and then waited in a smoky reception lounge.
His girl showed up and he left... Mine came about 2/3 minutes later and then began the drama.
I came out and she was waiting by the door of the store: I very politely introduced myself to her and said hello. No answer.
She didn't even looked at me, made eye contact or anything. She just grabbed the number for the reservation out of my hand. "Ruff start" I told myself.
On our way to the hotel, I tried to have some small chat with her to break the ice but nothing seemed to work. She was just pointing out direction to the hotel and it really looked like she didn't want to be there.
Once at the LH, she paid (hotel fare was included) and then as we had to wait a couple of minutes, sat down on a couch at the entrance, took her phone out and started to play a game on it.
So I slowly kneeled down to her and asked her if something was wrong and that anyway, I couldn't do anything for now as I was quite shocked by this whole situation.
We went back to the shop, I asked to talk to the manager and politely explained him what happened. The entire time the girl was standing on his side, with her head bended like a 5 year old child who's been told off, it was an horrible scene folks.
The guy didn't want at first to give me my money back so I asked to speak to another person, we finally agree (after 15 minutes of my best Keigo) that they would just take the money for the hotel fee (around 2000 yens) and I left.
It was terrible in many ways: terrible for the girl as I actually never knew what was wrong. She didn't want to work in this kind of shops but desperately needed money, she just had a bad day or a bad experience with a foreigner once. I'll never know.
I was actually just trying not to make it worse for her, while trying as well to get my money back as I felt indeed terrible...
The second thing while dealing with this situation, was to talk as politely as possible with the shop owner. In this kind of places, I try to always remember about "my father's fault" and therefore try to think about the next foreigner who's going to show up.
So it can be very tricky! The end of the story btw is that my friend indeed had a great time and even matched with that very same girl on Tinder a couple of weeks later...