Regular Payments off a Credit Card Discussion

jacktom_2

Thanks for this alarming news

AF2791982

I'm with Virgin and i'm sure they've wacked on some sneaky charges even though i'm Interest free until December! I was fined for late payment - even though the payment went through when I was on holiday......I'd paid four days before I'd left.

Anyone else come across this?

Moggles_2

AF2791982 wrote: »

I'm with Virgin and i'm sure they've wacked on some sneaky charges even though i'm Interest-free until December. I was fined for late payment - even though the payment went through when I was on holiday......I'd paid four days before I'd left.

If your payment arrived after the payment due date, then Virgin will have withdrawn your interest-free deal and is now charging you interest at your standard rate.

From feedback here, Virgin will refund late fees as a goodwill gesture and reinstate your 0% interest rate, provided that it's a "first offence" and you ask nicely. Leave it a few weeks though and this lender may not refund interest already charged.

Btw, If you ring Card Services on 01244 673700, you'll avoid the perishing 0870 numbers

kindofaverage

CANCELLED CARDS FOR NO REASON?

Hi - has anyone had their credit card company closing down their account - giving just a month notice?
we pay the total every month and the credit card company called - monument - just wrote and said they were closing our account. we originally had £5000 limit - for some reason approx 6 months ago it was reduced to £2500 and after that £750 - and now they have closed it - no reasons explained. we paid in full the amount owing and that has been that. Has anyone experience of this please?

Moggles_2

kindofaverage wrote: »

Has anyone had their credit card company closing down their account giving just a month notice? We pay the total every month and the credit card company, Monument, wrote and said they were closing our account. We originally had £5000 limit. For some reason approx 6 months ago, it was reduced to £2500 and after that £750 and now they have closed it. We paid in full the amount owing. Has anyone experience of this please?

Yes, this has been reported on the main credit card board several times.
If you use the search facility, you'll unearth some previous discussion

In a nutshell, Monument is in trouble.

kindofaverage

thanks moggles!

Miss_Moppet

My father wanted to renew his AA membership about two months ago. As well as receiving a reminder through the post, he received three uninvited and pushy phone calls from the AA. Each caller attempted to persuade my father to set up (over the phone) an annual “recurring payment” in favour of the AA.

In each of these phone calls, my father explained that he simply wanted to renew his membership for the forthcoming year by a single payment. Even so these callers persisted so much so that my father began to suspect that these people were perhaps on a healthy commission if they could get him to sign up to an annual recurring payment on his debit or credit card.

Throughout the final phone call, the caller (who had made at least one of the previous calls and claimed that he’d asked him to ring back) suggested my father give him his credit card details and he’d arrange for a single payment to be taken for this year’s renewal only.

My father became suspicious and he felt that after all the fuss and pressure he’d been previously subjected to, he feared the caller might actually create an unauthorised recurring payment on his credit card; so my father declined to give his card details and ended the call.

In view of the potential delays with the post, my father thought he’d renew with the AA this year online (by single payment). Although the website clearly gives the initial impression this is possible, as my father proceeded to the ‘Your payment’ section he found the following wording where it could very easily be missed:

“… you agree to pay by recurring payment method, so your breakdown cover is set to be renewed automatically every year.”

Even the AA website was attempting to coerce him into inadvertently setting up a recurring annual payment. As time was growing short, my father was left with no choice but to abandon the website and telephone the AA to renew by single payment over the phone and just hope this wasn’t converted into a recurring payment against his wishes.

When he phoned to renew he asked the advisor why there wasn’t an online facility to pay by credit/debit card as a simple one off payment, especially as their website had stated very clearly at the start that this payment method was possible. The advisor replied

“Our members don’t want that, they want the assurance of knowing it’s renewed automatically”.

Are they actually saying that my father was the only one out of several million members who didn’t want to set up an annual automatic payment to the AA?

My father decided to write to the AA to query this and he received the rather smug reply as follows:

“I have been advised that due to restrictions with our system we are not able to offer a one off payment option on our website. The AA are constantly reviewing its procedures and I am able to confirm that this is an area that is currently under review.”

I can’t believe that an organization as big as the AA can’t get their website to have the full range of payment methods, instead of only recurring payments, when everyone else’s website can!

Now you might ask what is so wrong with a recurring payment that renews your AA membership automatically every year. Below is an extract from what Martin Lewis says on the subject.

Q.Why are Recurring Payments so dangerous?
A. Recurring payments effectively mean you give a company your debit or credit card details and say 'take a payment whenever you think I owe you".
You CAN'T CANCEL them. Only the company you're paying can do that!
Hopefully, reputable companies will stop filching money when asked. Yet issues galore can crop up - it only takes a small glitch for it to become a nightmare...

Fortunately, my father had already been told about this important article and read it, and was on his guard when the AA phoned him. For the full article, here is the link http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/recurring-payments

Could problems really happen with the AA on this? Well, the above article continues with the following example regarding the AA by JoeTeeee – “I’m being charged by a card I cancelled four years ago!”

I've found out the hard way about the perils of a Recurring Payment. Yesterday I received a credit card bill, with a payment taken from it, for a credit card that I had cancelled FOUR years ago…

… To add insult to annoyance I phoned the AA to get them to refund the payment to the old card and take payment from my current card, and they said they can't refund onto the old card as it has been cancelled!

All I can say is that pigs will fly before I’ll ever set up a recurring payment on a debit or credit card. They simply don’t have the protection you would get with a bank account direct debit, and shame on the AA for trying to force its customers into this sort of trap.

Moggles_2

Miss_Moppet wrote: »

My father wanted to renew his AA membership about two months ago. As well as receiving a reminder through the post, he received three uninvited and pushy phone calls from the AA. Each caller attempted to persuade my father to set up (over the phone) an annual “recurring payment” in favour of the AA ...

Thanks for your feedback.

FYI (and anyone else reading this), the following companies seem rather keen on continuous payment authorities [CPAs], but slow to cancel agreements: :rolleyes:

AA subscription, AOL, McAfee, CPP (Identity protection insurance etc), National Homestudy, Natureberry, Norton Anti-virus, RAC, Sentinel, Sky, Virgin Media and Vistaprint, as many here have found out the hard way :cool:

London_Man_2

Blimey, so confusing, wish they put Debit and Credit cards on equal footing... No?...

Paul_Herring

London_Man wrote: »

Blimey, so confusing, wish they put Debit and Credit cards on equal footing... No?...

When it comes to these sorts of payments, they are.

If you give them the long number off the middle of your Debit card it's entirely possible for a continuous payment to be made on your current account (instead of the sort code+account number required to set up a DD)