Balance Transfer gone wrong! Any recourse?

Late_To_Bed

Hi,

A couple of months ago, I got an offer in the post from a credit card company. I have an account with them but not used it for about a year.

Thy offered me 0% on balance transfers up to £1000 for a year. With a 3% fee.

I phoned thm up and took advantage of this, but as I had the dd to pay the entire amount every bill, I made sure I changed this to minimum amount.

Imagine my annoyance when I see they have taken the whole £1000 from my bank account.

What is my best course of action?

Better_Off_1983

When you amended the D/D with the credit card company, did they not send a confirmation of the change?

Late_To_Bed

Better_Off_1983 wrote: »

When you amended the D/D with the credit card company, did they not send a confirmation of the change?

No.

I am 100% sure i asked for and they confirmed the change though.

Would it be correct to assume phone calls to credit card call centres are recorded?

pqrdef

Just because they confirm it doesn't mean it takes effect straight away. Some firms take the view that your monthly statement is carved in stone and no changes can take effect before the next one.

In principle the monthly statement should say what they will take from which bank and when. But sometimes they're annoyingly vague, e.g. they just say "your bank account" which is no use at all when you're changing banks. And if you're on paperless Barclaycard, you don't even get a proper monthly statement.

And sometimes you can vary what it says on the statement before the due date, and sometimes you can't.

DD for full amount is a trap. There's always the risk that by the time you find out what they're going to do, even if they give you due notice, it's too late to do anything about it.

aldredd

pqrdef wrote: »

DD for full amount is a trap. There's always the risk that by the time you find out what they're going to do, even if they give you due notice, it's too late to do anything about it.

Agree - I have all my cards set at minimum (with a min cap, eg at least 50) - then manually pay the rest / whatever I plan to pay, once I've seen the bill.
Just have fear of someone hijacking my card, and have a huge CC bill wipe my bank account before I've had a chance to notice / sort it out!

Tixy

What did the first statement with the balance on say on it in relation to the dd payment that would be taken?

How long between when you asked for the change to be made, to the date of the next statement?

JimmyTheWig

pqrdef wrote: »

Just because they confirm it doesn't mean it takes effect straight away. Some firms take the view that your monthly statement is carved in stone and no changes can take effect before the next one.

But presumably, OP, from what you've said you asked them to change the direct debit when you did the balance transfer, rather than after your statement came out showing the balance transfer?

Tixy's question about what the statement said is very important.

Late_To_Bed wrote: »

Would it be correct to assume phone calls to credit card call centres are recorded?

Generally they will be recorded, but I don't think you can rely on them having it / finding it. Having the name of who you spoke to and the date/time of the conversation will help them find this. But would certainly be asking them to check any recordings if they don't believe you.

Have you spoken to them about it?

iAMaLONDONER

Late_To_Bed wrote: »

Hi,

A couple of months ago, I got an offer in the post from a credit card company. I have an account with them but not used it for about a year.

Thy offered me 0% on balance transfers up to £1000 for a year. With a 3% fee.

I phoned thm up and took advantage of this, but as I had the dd to pay the entire amount every bill, I made sure I changed this to minimum amount.

Imagine my annoyance when I see they have taken the whole £1000 from my bank account.

What is my best course of action?

So what happened when you complained?