Brittania Rescue (Continuous Credit)

gremilex

Some may want to be aware of an incident that I have just experienced with Brittania Rescue.

When I took out my membership in 2004 it appears I missed the clause that permits them to continue to charge my credit card forever, without giving me any warning.

It took some time for me to be notified of the charge that they had made to my credit card, as I am currenly working abroad.

The cars that the cover was for were sold long ago. I left the UK in 2005.

They refused a full refund for the charges, after I explained the circumstances. They were only prepared to refund from today when I called them and charged an admin fee.

There is nothing that the credit card company can do either, because there will be a contract somewhere that Brittania Rescue can charge me until I cancel.

To be honest I cannot recall that being a condition.

I thought I would share my experience with you so you can avoid the same pitfall.

mrcow

It's still worth calling your credit card compnay anyway and telling them that it was an unauthorised transaction.

You don't even have the cars any more so it's not as if you were covered for any kind of service.

Astaroth

Continuous Payment Authority is abused by many companies, not gaining explicit consent, using on Switch cards (not allowed at all) etc but at the same time is very helpful for many people who want to pay monthly/ annually by credit card and not have to remember to phone them every month/ year to make payment.

The one "possitive" thing is that banks are in the process of formalising the process more than it currently is so it will be closer in operation to the Direct Debit schemes. The obvious problem is that at present all the additional counter fraud/ security measures etc are all currently optional so it may be difficult to suddenly try and reign in an industry that is really fairly liberal on the basis that the consumer is so well protected by the consumer credit act