TalkTalk Direct Debit Date change

moosetastic

I am so glad that I am not the only one affected by this, I got this via email tonight -

Please be advised that from March onwards, customers who are registered for online billing will have their direct debit payment date approximately 7 days after their bill date. This means that your direct debit will now be taken approximately 7 days after your bill which is issued around the 4th of every month.

Kindly note that are making this change to align payment terms across our brands.

Customers were advised of this change 30 days before it was implemented via emails. The emails were sent out in bulk and if you did not receive it, then other customers would not have received it either. This notice period is in line with our Terms and Conditions which state that changes can be implemented as long as we give 30 days notice.

I've never received this supposed email informing me of this, my bill was sent to me on Saturday, the bill date is 30th March, giving me 5 days notice. This is totally unacceptable. I have taken a screenshot of my mailbox with every TalkTalk email I have received since December to them to show that I have not received this notification.

Surely this is a breach of the Direct Debit guarantee? This is what the Direct Debit website says -

Direct Debit Guarantee

• The Guarantee is offered by all banks and building societies that accept instruction to pay Direct Debits
• If there are any changes to the amount, date or frequency of your Direct Debit the organisation will notify you (normally 10 working days) in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. If you request the organisation 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 the organisation 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 the organisation 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 the organisation.

Therefore, TalkTalk are in breach of the Direct Debit guarantee in this instance?? Totally fuming about this! :mad:

lilmizbloodbath

That is what I thought about Direct Debit but who do we report them to?

I have just checked the email notifying me of my February bill and found:

We’d like to make you aware that we’re changing our bill payment terms. From March 2011 onwards your monthly Direct Debit payment will be taken 7 days after your bill is produced. There’s nothing you need to do, we will continue to collect payment from you automatically. However, as this is a change to the day we collect your payment you may wish to check your bank account to ensure there are enough funds to cover your future payments.

No approximately mentioned there and this "notification" is very easily missed. The was nothing particularly to draw my attention to this section of the email (it was in small black bold type on a white background). I would have expected to received a completely separate letter by post. I opted to receive bills by post not changes to T&Cs.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Direct Debit Guarantee

• If there are any changes to the amount, date or frequency of your Direct Debit the organisation will notify you (normally 10 working days) in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. If you request the organisation to collect a payment, confirmation of the amount and date will be given to you at the time of the request

The letter you got is the "as otherwise agreed" bit. It's seven days now. They're perfectly entitled to do this. The objective is to maximise cash flow and to minimise any opportunity to resolve a billing issue BEFORE the amount is debited, leaving you begging the supplier for a part refund of your own money.

You have to be notified in advance of the debit and I haven't read the whole thing above, but if Talk Talk say they will take the debit seven days after the production of the bill, and the bill takes six days to get to you, then you have only one day's notice, not seven as stipulated.

It all depends on the exact phrasing. BT is "up to 10 days" which means any period between 0.000001 milliseconds and 10 days notice. It depends on whether Talk Talk is "seven days" or "up to seven days" in which case the bill arriving on day one and being dbited on day two is perfectly acceptable.

System

TalkTalk customers who have opted for online billing would have got an email in February and again in March both of which included the following message :
"We’d like to make you aware that we’re changing our bill payment terms. From March 2011 onwards your monthly Direct Debit payment will be taken 7 days after your bill is produced. "

That message fullfills the rules of the Direct Debit guarantee because you were notified of the bill payment terms more than 14 days before the payment date was to be changed.

Since in my opinion, this is a materially detrimental change to your contract terms, you could ask to leave TT without early termination fees being applied, not sure if TT would accept this argument tho ?

However, if this is the only reason for leaving, then reconsider, because it is sooo simple to budget to ensure that you have sufficient funds in your bank account on the new D/D date. If you are having difficulty doing this level of budgetting, then your problems are far more serious than just this TT D/D date !

quichelorraine

I'm glad I am not the only one caught out by this. I just had the exact same conversation with the unfriendly lady at Talk Talk. My phone bill always comes out on the 7th and I budget appropriately for this. Check my bank today, the last day before payday and day when I have the least funds in my account to see that phone bill has come out. The lady on the phone says I was given notification. She is right, I was notifed just 3 days ago tacked onto the bottom of the usual your online bill is ready email.

Surely something like this should have come in a seperate email so that people are made more aware! Now thankfully I earn enough to not have to budget as tightly as others, but it could have been a much worse situation. I'm sure there will be many people who have gone into their overdraft because of this.

I had my payment date set at the 7th for a reason!

Anyway, the unhelpful lady informed me she would be passing this onto her supervisor who will get back to me within 48 hours. We shall see. I'll certainly be mentioning this form when speaking to them again!

bertiebots

Arggghhhhh!!! I have just received another bill from talktalk. I payed my last bill on the 14th and this one is dated 27th so will come out on monday with the new 7 days after billing. Thats 2 bills in less that 3 weeks. I am very annoyed about this and am going to phone them in the morning but dont hold out much hope that they with give a !!!!!!!!!

lilmizbloodbath

There is a notification tagged on to the bottom of Februarys bill email. No "Important changes" or anything like that. It's just in small black bold text.

What really gets me is that TalkTalk have acknowledged for years that they have a three day delay between the bill date and customers receiving their bill available emails. This month there was six days between my bill date and my DD being due. I have cancelled the DD, have started the process to transfer my service to another provider (although at no point did TalkTalk tell me that they use non standard LLU equipment and that I would be charged to leave them by any new provider as they will need to convert my line) which should be completed in the next two weeks. I will pay the bill once TalkTalk issue a final bill as I do not trust them to refund me the money without me having to spend a fortune in phone calls to them.

Yorkshire_Pud

Suits you sir - not

So ALL TT customers now pay their bills at the end of the month in variance to the TT rep post of 23/9/10 when he said they had to have different billing dates or they couldn't cope with enquiries.

By the way where are you now TT rep? I will PM you to wake you up.

Is Talk Talk unique in insisting that customers pay their bills on the last day of the month!?

Before it took them 14 days to produce and debit a payment; now they have perfected billing all their customers 7 days after the bill is 'produced' (not RECEIVED - that's 3 days before payment) so rather than push their billing date forward 7 days to suit the CUSTOMER who would then have the same debit date they bring it forward from the beginning of the month to the end when funds are likely to be low. As the bill varies depending on use unlike most 'fixed' utility averaged bills it means customers are more likely to be caught out.

The only thing Talk Talk respond positively to is negative media coverage, they won't bother with any individual complaints to your satisfaction because you will never access a rep above reading a script and I can't fink for my my self level I am a robot!

Don't know where I'm going with this sorry!

Yorkshire_Pud

TalkTalk_Company_Representative wrote: »

HI tezbeds,

The reason for a fixed DD cycle is to evenly split contact during the month.

If all customers were billed on the same day, even if only 1% of them were to have any query about their bill we would see a huge increase in contact around the bill date, then minimal contact the rest of the month.

This would have a negative impact on customers due to the difficulty in managing such drastically changing call levels during the month.

As such having the multiple fixed DD cycles the entire customer base is spit into smaller positions, each billed, and payments collected, on differing days. This staggers customers contact with any queries on their billing or payment to give more even distribution of contact and more manageable operations of the business as a whole.

Regards

Mark

So many questions, so few answers. So it's all changed?

lilmizbloodbath

BAA1 wrote: »

TalkTalk customers who have opted for online billing would have got an email in February and again in March both of which included the following message :
"We’d like to make you aware that we’re changing our bill payment terms. From March 2011 onwards your monthly Direct Debit payment will be taken 7 days after your bill is produced. "

That message fullfills the rules of the Direct Debit guarantee because you were notified of the bill payment terms more than 14 days before the payment date was to be changed.

Since in my opinion, this is a materially detrimental change to your contract terms, you could ask to leave TT without early termination fees being applied, not sure if TT would accept this argument tho ?

However, if this is the only reason for leaving, then reconsider, because it is sooo simple to budget to ensure that you have sufficient funds in your bank account on the new D/D date. If you are having difficulty doing this level of budgetting, then your problems are far more serious than just this TT D/D date !

To be honest for such an important change in terms I would have expected a letter through the post. At a push I would have accepted a separate or clearly marked email. I receive a huge amount of emails every day. I don't have to to meticulously examine each one and I would suspect I am not alone in that respect.

This is not my sole reason for leaving but it is the final straw. Poor service, dire tech support (not I do not want to be put on hold while you ask your supervisor what SNR means) and unreliable connections.

I was an inherited customer from Onetel so i am extremely miffed that I now must pay a conversion fee to leave.