Standing Order problems

penny_pincha

We as a family have ended up paying for our 2012 annual subscription to a society twice. We pay by Standing Order, but last Aug (2011) we moved our current account from the Nat West to Barclays. However, I did leave our Nat West one open, even though I had withdrawn all the money. We requested that all our Standing Orders etc should be transferred to our new bank, but somehow it must have stayed in place in Nat West as well as being set up in Barclays too. Also this has resulted in us going overdrawn with Nat West since the payment went out in April. (I have only just noticed as I thought the account was dormant.)

Can anyone explain to me how standing orders work please? Surely if I had requested all Standing Orders to be transferred to Barclays then one shouldn't have been still active in Nat West as well as being set up in Barclays.

innovate

Unfortunately, banks make you believe that you don't have to check that all the DDs and SOs have indeed been properly transferred.

If I were you, I would talk to Barclays and ask them to re-imburse the payment that was wrongly made from your Natwest account, as well as any overdraft charges. They might pay you without you having to raise a formal complaint.

But settle the overdraft asap yourself.

Oh, and cancel the SO at Natwest, and check there isn't anything else they didn't completely transfer.

Buzby

SO's are unlike DD's and I'm unaware of them being able to be reversed after 5 days. As an SO is YOUR instruction (rather than the organisation requesting it), it would be up to you to cancel, unless the originating bank advised that it would/had cancelled the mandate.

As the person your paid will be aware of the 2 credits, they will refund you, but the issue of any fees and charges, that would not be up to them, but what you could negotiate with your old bank. I'd also wuery why your account was still active if you assumed you had closed it.

innovate

Buzby wrote: »

I'd also wuery why your account was still active if you assumed you had closed it.

It's always a good idea to have more than one current account.

RomaN

If I were you, I would talk to Barclays and ask them to re-imburse the payment that was wrongly made from your Natwest account, as well as any overdraft charges. They might pay you without you having to raise a formal complaint.

Barclays would have requested a list of the S/O + DDR's so that they would have been able to set them up on their systems as well as requesting them to be cancelled.

In this instance it appears as though Natwst haven't actioned this request. I would therefore speak to Natwest about logging a complaint where they would likely reimburse you.

innovate

It is possible that NatWest left one SO off the list, but it is a lot more likely that Barclays did not complete the transfer.

I have used 2 switcher services (First Direct and Nationwide), and neither of them transferred all the Direct Debits they were meant to transfer. Nationwide managed to transfer a Standing Order which they had explicitly been asked to leave alone.

pmduk

Once you a standing order has commenced it will remain in force until the customer cancels it. Even if a second bank sets up a seconds standing order the first has to be expressly cancelled.

meer53

Are you sure it was paid by SO ? Could it have been a continuous authority payment on your debit card ?

penny_pincha

It was definitely a Standing Order. I had deliberately not closed the Nat West account so that I could view past statements if necessary (we had opted for paperless statements) with a view too if I wasn't happy with Barclays I could reverse the process. We moved as the Barclays branch as it was located much more conveniently, not because we were unhappy with the Nat West service.

I have now contacted the treasurer of the society to which we belong and they have reimbursed me the additional payment already.

I thought it strange that other Standing Orders had been cancelled in Nat West (old bank) and this one hadn't. Having not moved banks before I was green to proceedures and didn't realise that I had to double check all SOs had been cancelled. When we moved banks it was some months ago, I had checked the first monthly ones to go out had not gone out twice and had gone out from the new bank (Barclays) and all seemed in order. SOs had gone out of the new bank and not the old bank, so I thought it reasonable to assume that all would follow the same pattern.

Thanks to all who have offered advice.

agrinnall

pmduk wrote: »

Once you a standing order has commenced it will remain in force until the customer cancels it. Even if a second bank sets up a seconds standing order the first has to be expressly cancelled.

Are you certain about this? I've never used a switching service but if SOs are not cancelled as part of the service then there seems little point in using one (although I'd probably do it manually anyway, but that's beside the point).

pmduk

It would be up to the customer to cancel a standing order either directly or via the new bank, (in which case it would still be the customer's job to ensure that the new bank had cancelled the order.)

One of the major benefits of a standard order over a direct debit is that it is entirely controlled by the customer, hence there is no equivalent of the direct debit guarantee. Conversely this can be a drawback as well.