Privacy Guard. Help!

Chris842

Hi,

I had a letter sent on the 29th of July from Privacy Guard. The letter said they've tried to take payment of £6.99 from my bank account but the direct debit was returned unpaid. There was a form to send a direct debit instruction to them too. It had my name and a membership number. I recently changed my bank account from Lloyds to Alliance & Leicester.

Before now, I had never heard of them. So I called the number, where someone said I had been with them since October 2007 and they have charged me £6.99 every month since then. (This is round about the same time I opened a bank account and CC with Lloyds).

I always read the small print having been stung by other things in the past, I'm almost certain I wont have signed up to this. After googling the name, it looks like other people have had problems too.

I never look through my bank statements in full so I've never noticed it, I only ever look at my balance. So its my own fault for not spotting it earlier, I know.

I worked out I must've paid about £240 to them in total. Has anyone else had any experiences with them? Do I have any change of claiming the money back?

McKneff

There must have been a time when you signed for this protection, surely.

You really should take more responsibility for your finances. I cant see how you can keep track of your finances if
you just look at the balance. Money goes in and out all the time. what if you see a balance of £150, yeah great, and you spend say £140 but a day after you look at the balance a direct debit for your mortgage goes out for £130. Youre overdrawn and you dont know about it until you look again at your balance, then you find out your overdrawn and they have slammed you with charges of £100, then you come on here asking for help in trying to get out of it. You acknowledge its your fault, half the battle. Now, lecture over, had to do it my friend.

Ask for a copy of the signed agreement and take it from there (come back here for more help)

Chris842

Thanks for your reply.

I recently graduated from university and am working, and my account is a graduate account with a £2000 overdraft. I have nothing like a mortgage to worry about, the only things that will be taken out each month is my phone bill and CC payments. (My rent gets paid in cash).
Anyway, I know my money management has been poor. Very poor. I used to not like looking at things, and worried about seeing my balance and how overdrawn I was during my time at university. However, Ive started to wise up in the last month or two and sort out what needs to be sorted out, like clearing off credit cards and saving money where I can. And Ive signed up to this site!

I will ring them tomorrow and ask for a copy of the signed agreement. But as I said, I have googled privacyguard, they've had a lot of complaints, Ive seen a lot of people refer to them as scam artists. And I found the following on Wikipedia about them:

"According to the Better Business Bureau, thousands of issues have been reported by consumers for deceptive selling practices, unauthorized charges to consumers' credit cards, and failure to respond or resolve issues."

Unfortunately in my case, they charged my bank account, not my credit card. So dont know if I can claim any money back?