Direct debit failure, Aviva

student89

Aviva have failed to take direct debits from me and failed to inform em they have done this also. I foudn this out when going to cancel the insurance due to sale of the car and now aparently owe them 250 pounds(ish).
They also did this for 7 monthly payments last year. I ended up having to pay for it after speaking to many indian call centre workers.
This time i am more angry and pursuing it further, having put in official complaints and registered with the financial onbudsman.
This time i can also not realya fford to pay it as I am due to leave for 4month trip to greece before university in september.
I understand i should have checked my bank statements for it, but one expects DD's to work.
Any advice or people in teh same/simular situation.
Thankyou for any replies, Student89

dacouch

Technically you owe the money, your best bet is to negotiate with them over spreading the debt and / or knocking some off it

dunstonh

This time i am more angry and pursuing it further, having put in official complaints and registered with the financial onbudsman.

Whilst they have let you down on servicing, legally you owe the money.

This time i can also not realya fford to pay it as I am due to leave for 4month trip to greece before university in september.

So, what did yo do with the money you would have paid them if it was going out correctly?

I understand i should have checked my bank statements for it, but one expects DD's to work.

You shouldnt assume anything and you should control your own finances as no-one else will.

I would expect them to offer a goodwill gesture and knock some off. The FOS will support that view as they cant insist on you paying nothing.

student89

I understand i should take control of my own finances and should have checked my statements etc and obviously regret not doing it now. Howver, surely that is the whole point of the direct debit, that you dont have to check it every month...its just done, its a convienience tool?...i can see myself being ignorant here :-/.
On what have i done with the money, technically i still have the money(enough to pay it off), however, i just give myself an allowence every week/month based on what i can spend based on what i need to sav to be in a financial situation id like to be in. ie be able to pay for gap year travels and have reasonable savings for uni.
thank you both for your help to, i love this sight and how everyone wants to help each other out.

Annisele

The convenience of direct debits isn't so much that you don't have to check something every month; it's more that you don't have to do something every month. You don't have to send a cheque/go to a bank/otherwise mess around every month in order to pay the bill.

If you still have the money, then I'm afraid I can't see too much of a problem. You owed the money, you still have it, you can just pay it to Aviva. (You could see it as Aviva having lent you seven months worth of its own money).

I think Aviva is likely to knock something off for the inconvenience - certainly worth asking them to - but you shouldn't assume that.

student89

Finally got through to someone with the authority to take my complaint/do something active about it. Got 100% knocked off (said they would usually knock off 50% but as they didnt knock anything off last time and this is the 2nd time they would knock off 100% and waive the cancellation fee).- to get to this lady I had to get through the automated system by pretending i wanted a brand new quote (7 hours after my initial call to cancel my insurance...good result though). Aviva seem to have had ALOT of problems with their DD system.
In conclusion all the staff are very nice, especially the uk staff who seem more free to talk/give opinions and offer help.

dunstonh

Well that is a result I didnt expect. We knew they would do some but 100% is most unusual.

Annisele

I didn't expect that result either, but I'm glad you got it sorted.

It might be a good idea to get Aviva to put that in writing though. If they were to forget, you might end up with debt collectors letters in a few months (which you would likely ignore because you were travelling and didn't receive them). If you then said 'but you said you'd write the whole debt off', you might get a response along the lines of 'yeah right'. I might be overly cautious - and tbh I think Aviva are unlikely to go back on what they said - but I think there's merit in getting a letter from them.

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OP - I hope you're not studying English, unless it's as a second language.