Refund of Lay-by without receipt

Lay-byed clothes sometime in September 2018 and I forgot about it.First week of January ,they called to tell me that my laundry has expired and I was far from home by then.Yesterday went to the store to collect the money that I used as a deposit and they tell me that my money is forfeited as I lost the receipt.The manager further explained that lay-bye it's like a cash price sale,if you lost the receipt they cannot refund you.My problem is I don't have the goods and I don't have cash either.Called their client care and they said,they can't help me with the complaint ,they don't deal with that and they insisted that I need to go back to the branch.