Does any bank empoyee work with direct debits

opinions4u

terryw wrote: »

Thanks very much for your reply. I really am grateful but you sound like the guy at the call centre. Please try and see it from my point of view.

I'm not trying to be the guy from the call centre. I'm trying to address the points that you raise.

Had I been the person you were speaking to I would have taken the initiative to refund the charges.

But the originating company is responsible for collecting the direct debit from the correct account. While the bank can recover your money (and cancel the charges if they choose to) they cannot stop a company authorised to collect a direct debit from doing so.

Your main gripe is the insurance company, not the building society.

You should be playing merry hell with them and demanding compensation.

pmduk

Unfortunately despite one very expensive long telephone call and two letters to the branch, I have received no response whatsoever. It is hard to start a complaints procedure when they just wont reply.

Firstly don't bother with phone calls, you can rarely speak to anyone knowledgeable. Make your complaint to the Building Society in writing, there should be a complaints procedure detailed on their website with the relevant address. Head the letter Complaint and if it hasn't been dealt with within 8 weeks forward the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.

Which Building Society is it?

terryw

pmduk wrote: »

Firstly don't bother with phone calls, you can rarely speak to anyone knowledgeable. Make your complaint to the Building Society in writing, there should be a complaints procedure detailed on their website with the relevant address. Head the letter Complaint and if it hasn't been dealt with within 8 weeks forward the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.

Which Building Society is it?

Thanks for the input. I first wrote a letter of complaint on July 2nd, and sent a reminder on 24 JUly. I have received no response from them whatsoever. In four days time I shall take your advice and write to head office.

I don't want to put the name on here just in case I do get a reasonable reply with some of sensible excuse and apology. But I think from my earlier posts that I have given enough clues for it to be identified.

thanks

pmduk

If it's the society I think, their behaviour of ignoring complaints is regularly highlighted in the press and this forum.

terryw

pmduk wrote: »

If it's the society I think, their behaviour of ignoring complaints is regularly highlighted in the press and this forum.

Yep, that's the one.

darkblue_2

All direct debits, regardless of how they are set up, are covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee.

• This Guarantee is offered by all banks and building societies that accept instructions to pay Direct Debits

• If there are any changes to the amount, date or frequency of your Direct Debit (insert your organisation name) will notify you (insert number of ) working days in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. If you request (insert your organisation name) to collect a payment, confirmation of the amount and date will be given to you at the time of the request

• If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit by (insert your organisation name) or your bank or building society you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society

- If you receive a refund you are not entitled to, you must pay it back when (insert your organisation name) asks you to

• You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by simply contacting your bank or building society. Written confirmation may be required. Please also notify us.

The organisation was at fault.

I work for a company who use direct debits. If we ever have a problem, which inevitably happen with human error, we refund the bank charges, too.

terryw

Thanks for the post darkblue. The insurance company who instigated the direct debit have admitted the error and reapaid the charges.

My quib is with the society who allowed a direct debit to be instigated and relied purely upon an account number and not the name of the account which would have immediately shown the error had this been checked. To compound this, they allowed it to happen a second time even after they have been informed of the first error.

darkblue_2

These kind of errors do happen.

Now that DDs can be set up without so much as a signature, the difficulties in confirming accounts are compounded.
Our company applies for direct debits, and we don't always get the name right. It has never had an affect on our ability to apply for payments.
We frequently have clients who use their personal accounts and tell us it is a business account and supply a trading name, but we can still take payments.

E.g. John Smith sets up a direct debit under the name of Smith's Interior Decorators.

The account number is really all we need to get right in order to apply for payments.
We've also had cases where human error on our part meant we applied for direct debits without supplying any name. We still collected the payments.

If you have online banking, you should be able to view all outstanding direct debits. But if it's a smaller building society, it may not have the same sort of abilities.

terryw

Thanks that's very helpful and makes absolute sense.