TV Licence took payment 3 times

lazer

Hi,

I payed my Tv licence last night online by debit card and then checked my bank account and the amount has been deducted 3 times.

I have phoned both the tv licence and the bank, and they say they is nothing they can do as they are all just pending transactions and will bounce back within 48 hours.

So basically, for 48 hours I don't have access to almost £300 of my money!

Anyone got any suggestions?
Is it worth complaining to the TV licencing company?

I cna survive without the £300 - but what would happen if i needed that money to buy food, petrol, nappies etc?

Kurtis_Blue

You don't have any problem and this mistake has not effected you in any way at all, my suggestion would be move on and be glad you have the time for this and don't have any more pressing problems.

lazer

Kurtis_Blue wrote: »

You don't have any problem and this mistake has not effected you in any way at all, my suggestion would be move on and be glad you have the time for this and don't have any more pressing problems.

No the mistake has affected me, I have to delay on paying other bills until the money comes back in and have been inconvienced (as well as suffered a slight financial cost) by the phone calls I needed to make to sort this.
Would you not think it was a problem if almost £300 was taken from your account unauthorised?

I already resented paying £145 for a tv licence as i do not think it is a fair tax or good value for money (We only get 4 channels), so to be charged this tax 3 times does not seem fair.

crazyguy

I would tell them that it has cost you extra for this mistake and that you want it back, I would also state to them that due to this error they should also be reimbursing any extra cost's ie: phone calls and time spent.

TV licence, flaming liberty takers

IanSomm

Hi lazer!

I had a similar issue with an online company not so long back. I got deducted 3 times as well when I only intended to buy 1 product. In my case the payment kept propping up "failed" or "unsuccessful" on their secure checkout page so I repeated the process 3 times. After the 3rd "failed" attempt I contacted my bank. They said there were 3 authorized payments, all of which were available to the merchant to capture! And the worst part is the funds were reserved just like you. The bank rep told me I had to wait a certain no. of days before the bank could void the payments. Otherwise I would need to get the company to fax my bank to confirm they would not take /capture/accept the 3 payments in question. Once I did this I had my money back (all 3 payments) shown within 24 hours on my online account.

Hope this helps somewhat?

lazer

crazyguy wrote: »

I would tell them that it has cost you extra for this mistake and that you want it back, I would also state to them that due to this error they should also be reimbursing any extra cost's ie: phone calls and time spent.

TV licence, flaming liberty takers

Thanks for this

I think i will write a letter of compaint, but well TV licencing isn't like a normal company, they don't need to compete for your business as we all ahve to use them if we want a TV!

crazyguy

It does not matter that they think they are above the law, this was an error and should be put right and any cost's incurred should be refunded in full.

IanSomm

I agree completely. Well said.

Kurtis_Blue

lazer wrote: »

No the mistake has affected me, I have to delay on paying other bills until the money comes back in and have been inconvienced (as well as suffered a slight financial cost) by the phone calls I needed to make to sort this.
Would you not think it was a problem if almost £300 was taken from your account unauthorised?

I already resented paying £145 for a tv licence as i do not think it is a fair tax or good value for money (We only get 4 channels), so to be charged this tax 3 times does not seem fair.

You didn't need to make any phone calls to sort it out, it was a simple error that would bounce back automatically and the banks took no action you said, but I can see it would be normal to phone the bank once to ask about this issue.

Stuff happens, some time causing very minor inconvenience.

Normally when things are charged multiple times on-liine it is due to user error with page refreshes etc..

crazyguy

Kurtis_Blue wrote: »

You didn't need to make any phone calls to sort it out, it was a simple error that would bounce back automatically and the banks took no action you said, but I can see it would be normal to phone the bank once to ask about this issue.

Stuff happens, some time causing very minor inconvenience.

Stuff may happen as you put it,

Shoe on the other foot and they would hound you non stop morning noon and night to get a payment.

Kurtis_Blue

crazyguy wrote: »

Stuff may happen as you put it,

Shoe on the other foot and they would hound you non stop morning noon and night to get a payment.

No they wouldn't, if you paid 3 times online by accident they would refund you and would not charge you their banking fees nor their wasted time.

And thats not even the issue because you don't need to "hound them" they are going to refund it automatically there is no issue.