MSE News: Hotel Chocolat customers charged a year late for purchases

Consumerist

banjobob wrote: »

This happened to me a couple of years back, after a holiday in Greece I had paid for a hotel bill, I had not realised they hadn't taken it and it appeared about 12 months later. Bottom line is that I'd had the items, I had to pay for them.....

Another Hotel Chocolat employee ? Or perhaps even the same one registered again ?

Gordon_the_Moron

I'm not an employee, family of an employee, shareholder or in any other way financially connected to Hotel Chocolat, nor am I a customer of theirs (I'd actually never heard of them until this story)

The arguments about whether they should or shouldn't collect the money are pointless.

They are well within their legal rights to collect the money, nobody has, or can, dispute that.

Why on earth they would do this with the cost of all the refunds of fees, admin work, bad publicity is beyond me. Surely to god the cost of collecting the money must outweigh the gain, if it was my business I would just let it go and make sure it didn't happen again.

chexum

This is one of the reasons I hate using debit cards for anything more expensive then a few pounds.

It's fair from Hotel Chococolate to offer a refund of the costs, but what if it's got someone into unapproved overdraft? Will they "refund" the late payments recorded on the credit report?

And I'm still scared something like this to happen on my long canceled cards. I'm under the impression the bank would not have a problem putting it on the card, but will they be bothered to send me a statement? If it was online statements only, would I still have access to the online interface after a year? Would they even keep my personal details that long?