Keeping items that you're not billed for

Horlock

Where do you stand legally if you buy an item and the company forget to charge you credit card?

Suppose you buy an item and the company forget to charge you - are you legally obligued to inform them? at your expense? Assuming not - which is what I'm hoping.

How long afterwards until you are completely in the clear.

Is there a point in the future say 1 year after which you can forget all about the purchase? ie that they can no longer request the money.

Hypothetically if I bought a £1000 computer from PC world and they didn't charge my credit card and I use the computer for a year where do I stand:

Supposing they suddenly charge my credit card could I simply return the goods - now year old pc not worth a fraction of the £1000.
Could I refuse to pay?

Obviously for small amounts of money it probably doesn't matter so much but for large money - while I have allowed for the purchase on my credit card this month - in three months time when I have forgotton about the purchase a large purchase can easily take me over my available limit incurring large fines etc

Is there a period of time in which if a company doesn't request the money then the company is no longer entitled to the money - eg supposing I change my credit card etc what happens when the company notices or is it just down to the assumption that the company forgot 6 months ago they will never remember or be able to track where the missing money went to so just forget about it.

Any advice greatfully received - but however greatful I may be I'm not planning on sharing the forgotton money

CIS

I have a feeling they can take payments for up to 6yrs after the debt is due; ie. the purchase date.

golddustmedia

I suppose they would have to prove beyond doubt you were in receipt of the goods....

For example I ordered a washing machine about 6 months ago and after no sign of goods I cancelled the order and got a refund.

When the... sorry IF the washing machine hypothetically showed up I might have signed "Mickey Mouse" as the reciever of said goods... try proving it was I who took delivery... (hypothetically )

aliwatts

Horlock wrote:

Where do you stand legally if you buy an item and the company forget to charge you credit card?

Suppose you buy an item and the company forget to charge you - are you legally obligued to inform them? at your expense? Assuming not - which is what I'm hoping.

How long afterwards until you are completely in the clear.


Any advice greatfully received - but however greatful I may be I'm not planning on sharing the forgotton money

They cant chase you for money, I believe it is called Statute barred, when an outstanding amount has been owed for more than 6 years and they havent contacted you or pursued you for the amount.

Hope this helps.

Ali
:j

lizastar

I remember something on 'Thats Life' (a million years ago, but still..!), Esther said that if you recd an item(think it was Cds from Britannia or Books from Readers digest) & didnt want it in the first place & asked them to take it back but they didnt, after 6 months it belonged to you. Its not quite the same things as you ask about I know. Bank statements are supposed to be kept for 6 years & I think it is because of any comeback on payments you have made-obtaining proof etc, so reckon CIS is correct.

moonrakerz

A couple of years ago I had a sum of about £150 suddenly appear on my credit card satement, from a UK hotel chain, which I had used a fair bit in the past year or so, it didn't actually identify which hotel did the tranaction. I queried it with my card issuer because the date on the transaction was about a week after I had had my hip replaced so there was no way I stayed in that hotel then !
It took my card issuer about 3 months to sort it out; I had stayed in one of that chain about 6 months previously, apparently they had had a problem with their billing system so my card payment hadn't gone through to my account. When they realised this some 6 months later, they re-actioned all the debits that had not gone through, quite a large number I understand.

I didn't have a problem with paying for the hotel (my company had paid me for it !) - what did disturb me somewhat was that the hotel chain could keep my card number on file (without my permission) for that period of time and then charge it to my account 6 months later without any further reference to me. I spoke to the card issuer (MBNA) who said that the hotel was quite entitled to do this.

I wondered afterwards what would have happened had I pressed the point that I had a receipt from the hotel saying that I had paid in full and owed them £0.00 at the time of my stay.

MORPH3US

Put the money for the PC in a high interest account, if they don't charge you within a year then there is a good chance they won't charge you.

As for taking it back, seems a bit daft to me, you have the goods so should pay for them, if the company forget then all good for you. If they then remember in a years time, you just have to pay!

M

tempuscat

Slightly different case to the OP's, I know, but we recently ordered a chair (!) from MFI which, went it arrived, contained indecipherable assembly instructions and a bag of parts that seemed more suitable to building a Space Shuttle. So we rejected the thing and MFI came a week later and collected it. We then bought a chair from Staples, and that assembled OK. A week later, and MFI put through a full refund on my c.c. However. . . two weeks after that, DHL left us a note through the door to say they'd attempted to deliver a parcel. We couldn't imagine what it might be but as we were driving uptown that weekend and near the business park where DHL was located, we figured we'd pop in and check out the consignment. And yes, it was for us. And yes, we brought it home. And yes. . . it was a replacement chair from MFI.

The point is, we hadn't ordered it. We weren't expecting it. A friend of ours said that recent (or fairly recent) changes to consumer legislation meant that if you received something you never asked for, you were legally entitled to keep it.

I've no idea if that's true or not, legally speaking -- can anyone clarify this????

Anyway. We rang MFI, told them about the chair, and they said, well, if you'd never rung us, we would never have known. How nice to deal with such honest people!

(What I didn't tell MFI was that there was no way I was going to risk my seller reputation on eBay, listing a brand new office chair which, I've not the slightest doubt, a buyer would unpack and then find the presence of a NASA engineer to be urgently needed).

We dropped the parcel off at our local MFI store. And have felt properly self righteous ever since!