Where do I stand on Bank error in failing to cancel debit card

Missy570

I'm wanting to know where I stand... I stupidly agreed to 'free trial' of diet pills and also natural cleanse pills but needed my bank card details for postage and packaging then realised my stupidity and tried to cancel order with company as had then read reviews that you automatically get signed up as a member to which the charge your card £80 every month for each set of pills!! Conviently the company never answered their phone so I quickly went straight into my bank to explain my circumstance and cancel bank card of course ordering a new one even confirming with them that new card will have different numbers. I have now received new card and 10 days has past since last card was supposedly cancelled yet the diet pills company have just taken out two transactions of £80! How has this happened and are the banks at fault to reimburse me the £160 for failing to follow out a procedure? Please help can't afford to be down that sort of money

opinions4u

Did you ask the bank to cancel the continuous payment authority?

If so, complain.

if not, why not?

Gromitt

Cancelling a card doesn't cancel any transactions that were authorised by you on previous cards, it only cancels new transactions.

You need to tell the bank to cancel the CPA to the company.

R_P_W

So much easy money to be made out there!

agrinnall

You might be able to make a case against the bank if you fully explained the reason why you were asking for the card to be cancelled and they didn't tell you that would not prevent a CPA from carrying on. But unless you did the cancellation in writing it'll be your word against theirs, and might be difficult to prove.

marlewuk

sounds like the branch staff failed you there, if you explained the situation and they acted on your request to cancel card without informing you this wouldnt stop cpa - certainly worth raising, if they dont know they should have resources to find out what needs to be done in these instances.

matttye

agrinnall wrote: »

You might be able to make a case against the bank if you fully explained the reason why you were asking for the card to be cancelled and they didn't tell you that would not prevent a CPA from carrying on. But unless you did the cancellation in writing it'll be your word against theirs, and might be difficult to prove.

What are the chances of a bank cancelling a card without asking why? I'd think they'd ask for some kind of explanation to see whether it was actually necessary.

Hominu

You'd be surprised about the amount of people I've heard in banks panicking about there card, and its normally along the lines of "I've accidentally given my card details to someone I don't want to have (or they've obtained them via other means like phishing), I need to cancel my card ASAP!", and so the bank cancel the card. I've never heard anyone mention CPAs, and I doubt the bank are going to say "Calm down sir, come and have a sit down and a cup of tea and tell us all about it". More likely "Ok, thats done sir, anything else? Next!".

matttye

Hominu wrote: »

You'd be surprised about the amount of people I've heard in banks panicking about there card, and its normally along the lines of "I've accidentally given my card details to someone I don't want to have (or they've obtained them via other means like phishing), I need to cancel my card ASAP!", and so the bank cancel the card. I've never heard anyone mention CPAs.

The banks are definitely at fault there, as they should know that cancelling a card doesn't actually stop the account from being debited.

pmduk

Bank staff's training is woefully inadequate with respect to CPAs. It's still not unheard of for bank staf to say it's nothing to do with them, despite the FSA (now the FCA) making it abundantly clear that the bank should act on them.

matttye

pmduk wrote: »

Bank staff's training is woefully inadequate with respect to CPAs. It's still not unheard of for bank staf to say it's nothing to do with them, despite the FSA (now the FCA) making it abundantly clear that the bank should act on them.

Guess you just have to escalate the call until you get to somebody who knows what they're talking about.

Training in the complaints department usually seems better.