My brand new Co-op account - already a blemish!

fastnet

The direct debit guarantee is quite clear and makes NO mention of their being a lower limit on bank indemnity claims. I would complain about this. If someone takes a DD when they are not supposed to, the money is repayable by the bank immediately and then the bank should reclaim that money from whoever claimed the DD.

In reply to someone else in these thread, you cannot set up a DDI yourself on any account, it has to come from a third party company e.g. Sky with your authority. You can set up a standing order.

shirleymarye

fastnet wrote: »

The direct debit guarantee is quite clear and makes NO mention of their being a lower limit on bank indemnity claims. I would complain about this. If someone takes a DD when they are not supposed to, the money is repayable by the bank immediately and then the bank should reclaim that money from whoever claimed the DD.

In reply to someone else in these thread, you cannot set up a DDI yourself on any account, it has to come from a third party company e.g. Sky with your authority. You can set up a standing order.

Apparently the Co-op were supposed to have sent me a form to transfer my DDs from the Abbey,you sign it and send it back and they do the transferring from your old bank account. They didn't include the form with my account details in the post which is why I rang them to ask how to do it, the only other way would have been to ring all my people I pay by DD,as I have at least a dozen of them I didn't want to do it- lazy I know but it does say in their blurb that they can do it for you.
Hopefully it will be sorted by the 1st of the month.

Merry_Gentry

Merry_Gentry wrote: »

If you use the online banking, you can set up your DDs yourself.

Sorry, I've not been clear. I haven't set them up myself, but I have got various DDs set up on the account with no problems.

Marlowvian

Startagain - Oh no that doesn't sound good. Well done for holding your own.

I had heard the exact same thing from a non BR work colleague who is with the Co-op but I've heard several people say Co-op are ok, if not good.
Just your luck eh?

Costus

Not a very nice experience SA, get that letter off to the co-op explaining that this wasn't your fault, state the fact that you were given a refund, and this would not have been authorised if this was deemed to be your mistake, which it clearly isn't.

We also have had poor customer service from the co-op.

My OH actually went into the co-op bank to set up a very important standing order (monthly rent for our house), face to face as we didn't want anything going wrong with this standing order.

The money was in my OH's account and never came out on the day it was due, we left it for a few days as the date fell on the weekend, come the monday the money still hadn't been taken out so the next day my OH went back into the bank to find out what was going on.

My OH explained what had happened and why wasn't the standing order being taken, to which the lady behind the counter said, "what standing order, there nothing on the system, you don't have any set up " and "who set this up for you? " :mad:

My OH pointed out the other lady she had seen to set up the standing order, who was comical trying to make a sharp exit ! :rotfl:

We had to inform our Landlord that there had been a mistake at the bank (not sure if they believed us at that moment in time) and withdraw the months rent in cash and put it into the Landlords account ourselves.

A few days later our Landlord rang us to say that the rent had in fact gone into their account by standing order a few days after we had put the money in ourselves, and what the hell was going on, as the name on the standing order wasn't ours and did we know a Mrs XXXXX, we said no and rang the bank to find out what was going on.

It turned out that the lady my OH had originally spoken to had made a total mess up of the entire thing and that the rent money had been taken out of some poor innocent persons account ! (I hope that didn't go towards one of her 3 strikes!)

At least this proved to our Landlord that we hadn't been trying to pull a fast one !

A bit of a long winded affair, but it just might show that unfortunately the co-op has a few bad apples to say the least !

startagain_2

Wow,

Thanks everyone for your input - what a story Costus!
I have written a two page letter to the "Managed Accounts Manager"
complaining about the whole sorry mess.

The £19.50 charges have been refunded to my account already - This was after this awful woman told me it would take 24 - 48 hours and I had to pay cash in this morning in case the TV licence d/d was represented! She really was a scaremonger.

I have rung the Co-op this morning and asked to speak to a Supervisor or Manager. they have a really weird Callback system - they get back to you at some random time within 48 hours!!!!! This is crazy, what if I am at work - the last thing I need is to be called with this issue in front of my colleagues. :rolleyes:

With regards to the direct debit indemnity I thought it was the case that there was no lower limit - but I didn't want to argue with her, lowering myself to her level. I am going to give it until 10.45am and if I have not had a call then I will ring the Co-op again and get them to refund the £2.20. It is showing as a credit balance on my Sky acount because it has been paid twice!

Thanks for your support everyone.

SA

sententia_2

thanks for posting your experience.
whenever anybody rings now the the first thing I always do is take the persons name and their staff number.

usually the conversations now go as follows:

BANK - hello can i speak to X?
me - speaking
bank - this is BAILED OUT BY GOVERNMENT BANK CALLING.
me - can i take your name and operator number please.
bank - my name is X and number X. I now need to take you through your security questions.
me - i won't be giving you that information.
bank -but we need to talk to you about your account with us
me - then talk to the official receiver as you should do having been notified that i'm bankrupt. goodbye

startagain_2

Update.....

There are letters winging off in all directions at the mo......

One to the Managed Accounts Manager at the Co-op complaining about "Mrs M" her employee.

One to the Managed Accounts dept at the Co-op asking for a refund on the disputed Direct Debit under the Guarantee scheme reminding them that there is no lower limit on the amount. I couldn't do it by phone - "Mrs M" was there again this morning! :mad:

One to Sky with a copy of my bank statement showing the bank charge (before it was refunded) with a letter requesting compensation.

I can see me making money out of this at the end of the day.... I should be on the DFW board.......

SA

startagain_2

Hi everyone,

An update on this story - I feel I owe it to the Co-op......

The original horrible phone call was on Tuesday evening and I asked for a Supervisor to call me back. I then repeated this request on Wednesday morning when I telephoned them again. No-one has called.
I wrote two letters on Weds - neither of them have been acknowledged as yet, even though on their website they say that this is their policy.
So, I called them again this morning......
I spoke to a really nice guy called Michael who apologised, refunded the £2.20 unauthorised d/d straight away and then asked me to hold and ta raa..
a lovely guy called Steve came on the line who introduced himself as a Team Manager and listened to the whole saga. He was really apologetic and asked me a few details more about the original call and promised to look into it.
As a gesture of goodwill he then credited my account with £15.00 which I really wasn't expecting - what a lovely gesture and also promised that this wouldn't count as a strike on the account.

So all's well that ends well ......

Sorry for the long post!

SA

yellowmonkey

Thats a great result SA :T

Just shows it is worth persevering with something.

Well Done

ym