18866, d card,c card,or direct debit

dag_2

Would the limit be the card guarantee limit (£50 or £100 only, I forget which) or the account overdraft or even more?

The limit would be the overdraft limit - or whatever your bank feels like authorising, so that it can impose penalty charges - which is often higher than your official overdraft limit.

However ... going back a bit ... to say ...

You authorise them to take any sum up to your credit limit.

... is stretching a point. A continuous authority payment is not a blank cheque. The only thing you really authorise is for the supplier to take the amounts due under your subscription agreement. If they take more than this - or if they carry on charging you after you've tried to cancel - then dispute resolution procedures do exist.

So if you agree a continuous payment authority on a credit card, and it goes wrong, the worst that will happen is you won't be able to use that particular card for up to six months, and you'll have to do a bit of paper chasing to prove that you don't actually owe the money. The credit card company might issue a county court claim - but as long as you're prepared to return a defence form within fourteen days, you should be fine. It's incredibly unlikely that it will get to this stage.

Signing up for a continuous payment authority on a debit card is somewhat riskier - especially if you rely on the current account for money to pay for your groceries. It's not so bad if you have separate money in a savings account, but you may find yourself bouncing direct debits for mortgage interest or utility bills - so you'd have to arrange to pay them by cash over the counter instead. Your chances of recovering bounced payment penalty charges from the retailer are very slim.

So my advice to PaleScene would be to try to change to direct debit. If 18866 still don't offer direct debit at the time of writing, then I'd suggest you apply for a new credit card, specifically for the purpose of paying 18866. If you don't want or can't get a credit card, then use Telediscount instead.

dag_2

What if 18866 makes unauthorised charges?

Okay - I've done some reading up. If you can't get the supplier to confirm your cancellation to you, then I'd suggest sending a letter by recorded delivery or registered post.

Snag is - you can't do that with 18866. Not to worry. Once the credit card statement has been generated, you have 60 days to write a dispute letter to your credit card company. The letter should include your name, address, credit card account number, the date and amount of the transaction you are disputing, and details of why you dispute the amount - for example, fee for a subscription you've already cancelled, or charges for phone calls you've never made, or goods returned, or unknown supplier.

Be truthful - don't say that a cancelled subscription is an unknown supplier, because that would be fraud. The letter should be sent to the "billing enquiries" address, which should appear on your statement.

The credit card company must acknowledge your dispute within 30 days, and must either resolve it - or tell you why they won't - within 90 days. If they miss either of these deadlines, then you are not liable for the disputed charge, and they can't enforce it in the court. (However, you still need to return the defence form if they try.)

Meanwhile, you do need to continue making payments to the credit card account, but you're allowed to deduct the disputed charge, and recalculate the interest and minimum payment accordingly. If they apply penalty charges for failing to pay a disputed charge, then you can dispute the penalty in the same way.

You would be well advised not to make any other purchases on the card while trying to resolve a disputed charge.

This does not constitute legal advice.

K13_2

OH NO i only registered yesterday....yeah before this thread, however i used a bank debit card hope it wil be ok. My sister-in-law has been registered with 18866 for a while and has had no probs just very low bills!
Thanks anyway and good luck to us all.

Robert5988

dag,
2 excellent posts if I may say so. A huge hassle if things go wrong but under most circumstances you should eventually be able to get the Credit Card Company to take some action.

However the problem with telephone accounts is that is difficult to prove if you have made the calls or not – or rather disprove.

There have been the recent cases of internet hackers using your phone to dial £1+ a min premium numbers. BT amongst others have refused to waive the charges as the calls have been made from your line. Your problem, get better security on your PC!

How can you prove that someone has not used your line to ring premium numbers. How difficult would it be with a foreign company like 18866 who, as far as I am aware, nobody has ever managed to contact.

There have been problems in this field in the USA with internet !!!!!! sites – who always use this system. They take payments and then go into liquidation; and start up as another company. Again how do you prove that you haven’t correctly been charged $100 for listening to heavy breathing.

There are enough warnings about not entering into CPAs unless it is a reputable company in which you have confidence. So to be fair to VISA/Mastercard et al you can understand their reluctance to get involved. You have given an organisation – whom you really know nothing about - the authority to make charges to your card. If that turns out to be your misjudgement, why should they indemnify you?

Despite all the hypothetical musing above there is one unanswered question – Why have they not set up a direct debit scheme?

Since 18866(and its host of sister companies) came on to the scene their website has been stating that a Direct Debit payment scheme will soon be available – see their FAQ. It still has not been implemented. One wonders why not. Have they tried? Have they been rejected by the banks? Try to ask them – I have – no answer – what a surprise.

PaleScene

Thanks for the responses and clarification, dag - you've confirmed my suspicion that though 18866.com has done nothing to rouse any complaint by me (and with regard to the point made in the discussion thread about not using them if we don't like CPA - it's a big, big price difference, even for a low phone user - okay, maybe I'm mean :-* ) I would probably feel safer using something other than our main account.

Direct Debit would of course be ideal - maybe I should join in with the emails to ask for it. I'd like to imagine they've been so slow with that because it costs to set up, not for any more nefarious reason.