Help please re insurance company taking money

the_blacksmith

Hi new to this so please be kind, and if its in the wrong section could someone please move it to correct one thank you.

Briefly 10 months ago I helped a friend that was in hospital by paying his monthy car insurance over the phone using my debit card. I thought nothing more of it and was repaid the £20 or so quickly.

I have just discovered to my horror that the insurance company have just taken £350 out of my bank account. (money I havent got so am now overdrawn).
I phoned them up this evening.

Firstly they wouldn't give me any information stating Data protection, I insisted they did talk to me, it turns out the person I paid for has defaulted on his payments and it has gone to a debt agency and its these people that have tracked previous payments made and used my card details to take this £350 payment.
They have told me that in the small print of the policy which he signed they are allowed to do this with any card he made payment with, thats fair enough but he didn't make the payment I did.
I have never seen or signed this policy and I was just helping at the time.
I am due to go into the insurance office on Saturday so they can speak to debt agency on my behalf, (they wouldn't or couldn't give me details).

I have also spoken to this friend and he said he would phone them tomorrow, I know he has not got the £350 to pay me as he's now unemployed, he also said he cancelled the policy months ago.

Basically his problem is not mine and thats for him to sort out, but I would really appriciate any advice on where do I stand ? the way I see it is I have been robbed from my bank account, what right do they have to access my bank account and just take a large sum of money like this.

Looking forward to reply's, thank you.

dacouch

It might be worth posting this on the Banking forum as they will no the legalities of debiting a third parties debit card etc

the_blacksmith

Thank you for that could you tell me how to do that please.

dacouch

Go into this forum http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=20 and open a new thread like you did here. To save you typing it all out again you can just leftclick and highlight your text, then right click on the highlighted part, click on copy. Then when you open your new thread just right click on the text part and click paste and it will copy it all out for you

the_blacksmith

Thank you, now done.