Virgin Credit Card Charge - Can they do this?

taliwillow

Hello all,

Sorry if this is a question that has been asked by someone else previously. On the 21st July I made the final payment on my Virgin Credit Card and then I cancelled the direct debit mandate as now my card is clear I won't need to make any more payments and I was planning on cancelling my card (Which I did on the 8th August). When I called the lady told me that I was actually £5 in credit which I thought was a bit strange but I just went ahead and cancelled my account with them. I checked my account online to see where this £5 came from and it looks like it was a £5 DD pymt made on the 5th August (My usual DD date). I checked all my bank accounts to see where this was paid from as I was sure I had cancelled it but couldn't see the pymt going out from any of them so I thought I would check the virgin account again this morning. It's now showing that the next expected payment amount is £0 but further down it says I now owe them £12 due to the payment on the 5th August actually rejected (obviously because I had cancelled it!). So what I'm really asking is can they charge me this when, as I made my final payment on the 21st July, there was no reason why they should have been requesting a pymt on the 5th August anyway. I work in accounts and I know that it does not take 2 weeks to cancel a DD request so I'm not sure where I stand on this.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Sorry this was so long winded!

Thanks

Taliwillow

skanger

I think that direct debit data is taken from the system 5-10 working days before, so MBNA would have sent the instruction to collect the Direct Debt with an execution date a week or maybe two weeks prior to the instruction being processed. When you cancel a Direct Debit you are supposed to tell the organisation that is collecting through it that you have done this to prevent this situation occuring.

As for the charge, I would call them up and explain that as nothing was due, they shouldn't have called the DD, you wern't expecting them to call the DD or even in fact ever use it again as your intention at that time was to close the account, and that is what you have now in fact done. I feel sure they will cancel the charge.

Skanger

gabthoms

The same thing happened to me. It does actually state in the direct debit t&c's that the payment due will be taken regardless of any additional payments made so they were in the right to take the payment. So my lesson from this is not to be too hasty in cancelling direct debits and to make sure that the credit card company is informed when I do! However, a quick call to Virgin to explain things and they cancelled the charge so hopefully they will do the same for you