Demon "no record" of my cancellation, £200 poorer

HeyBigSpender

My Broadband with Demon stopped working in August of last year. I couldn't get it to work for whatever reason, so rather than continuing to struggle and not having Broadband, I phoned them in October to cancel my account. They said that it would continue to be billed to the end of November for whatever reason. Fine, whatever.

Now, it's March. I just checked my bank statements and find that they have been continuing to extract 24.99 from my account by direct debit every month!

Just phoned up their customer services, and they have "NO RECORD" that I ever cancelled the account in October. So, therefore, they will not refund me.

What is that all about? I asked the lady on the phone if there was going to be a record of this phone call, and she said yes. But should I believe them? She says they will phone me back within 24 hours to proceed with cancelling my account. But should I believe them?

Can I just cancel my direct debit with the bank, or can they over-ride it?

I feel so ripped off! :mad:

Lyrrad

You can can cencel any direct debit at any time for anyone and they certainly would be not able to then proceed to take money from your account. However that has nothing to do with your present state of play with Demon. My advise is to fax/email/write to them. Verbal anything is always open to a massive grey area as you have clearly demonstrated. For you information you may well be able to go back to your bank that pays Demon the direct debit and explain to them that you cancelled verbally in October and that you would require all of the payments returned to your account from that date that have been paid 'by mistake'. You may very well be suprised by your banks response, but I would suggest you go into your bank branch rather than trying over the phone. A friend of mine stupidly signed at the door for a 'free phone' from Orange. Luckily for him the salesman did not complete the 'off premises' transaction properly, but in the meantime 2 x £50.00 were taken from his bank account by Orange. Armed with nothing more than this story, my friend went into his bank, cancelled the Direct Debit and got his £100.00 back.


Different story but same idea.


Certainly worth a try

krishna

Had similar problem with Demon about 18 months ago, at work. Rang up to cancel, but owing to changes in staff we didn't have the pass code. So they said fax letter through and gave me a fax number. I did that. They continued to charge. Told them we had faxed letter and gave fax number, they said that was the wrong fax number, though when I looked into it it WAS a demon fax number. In the end we told them to get stuffed and they finally went away.

Mind you they are not the only ones. Nildram continued to bill us after we transferred our broadband service to Zen.

claireb

Why not try the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman:

http://www.otelo.org.uk/content.php?pageID=43