late standing order

billycasper_2

hello everyone, just a query.
a friend of mine had car finance and because of various circumstances was unable to keep up the payment. She arranged with the finance company a payment schedule and everything was fine.
She is due to pay off this debt next year and rang them to find out how much was left to pay. She was shocked to learn that thay had been charging her for late payments when a standing order HAD been going out of her account regularly for years.
It transpires that at some point the standing orders had been going out as regular as clockwork but the finance company claim not to have been receiving them until some 3 weeks later. the bank obviously are stating that they have been sending them as normal and that 3 -5 days is the normal time.
she had moved within this time and the finance company had her old address. so she received no letters
She is going to challenge the charges but wondered if she was still responsible even if the standing order had been sent on a regular basis.

premierfella

Assuming this is a standing order and not a direct debit, my immediate thought would be to rule out the possibility that the car finance company's bank details had changed at any time since the standing order was originally set up (which would have been notified by letter to the "old" address the finance company held on file).

If that was the case and the payment delay was caused by payments arriving at the "old" bank account and there being a delay in the funds then getting to the "new" bank account, and the change of details had been notified in writing, it might cause a problem with respect to getting the late charges waived by the car finance company.

billycasper_2

the strange thing is that the late charges relate to "one off months", so for a complete year only one payment would be late and yet from the banks point of view, nothing has changed..
to be fair to the finance company they have asked her to write asking for the charges to be investigated..
thank you

Mikeyorks

billycasper wrote: »

the strange thing is that the late charges relate to "one off months", so for a complete year only one payment would be late and yet from the banks point of view, nothing has changed..

She can prove the SO initiation dates from her Statements? Possibly the SO does not have the reference embedded that she should use to get it direct to her account with the finance company ..... and it's hitting their suspense account instead? Then taking one day / several days, depending upon their workload, to move it from suspense to account.

They should carry the date received onto the account ..... but with human intervention it sometimes doesn't happen.

billycasper_2

yes, she can prove that the payments left on the same day (or just after) every month. things were fine for a couple of YEARS and then apparentley the odd month would be late. seems odd that the embedded reference was fine at first .. we shall see
thank you

Mikeyorks

It might be as well to check that the account ref with the finance company is the same now as it's always been?

My wife had a major set to with GE Money for a House of Fraser storecard. She paid it in store locally - as usual - but on the Statement, and not realising that they'd recently issued a replacement card (old one close to expiry) with a different reference. Got the obnoxious letter - weeks later - saying 'you haven't paid' - and realised that was a different Ref to on the receipt.

Had to ring them as the credit for the old was simply sitting there and there was no automatic link to the same debit on the new. So they moved it across .... but using the current date and thereby creating a healthy interest charge! Which took a further 3 x letters before they grudgingly admitted they had it wrong.