Reclaiming a failed Direct Debit fee

mac944

Hello,

I'm currently in a dispute with eBay who have attempted a Direct Debit on my account for £4.13. The Direct Debit was refused and the eBay have subsequently added a £5.00 fee to my account.

It appears I agreed to sign up to pay by Direct Debit in January 2012 but the first Direct Debit payment was only attempted this week (I don't use eBay very often).

After some digging around it appears the bank would have cancelled the Direct Debit under dormancy rules which I had no idea about until now.

When I asked eBay why the payment was attempted if the account was dormant and they said:

"We won' be able to know it till your bank lets us know and your banks lets us know when we attempt the payment. Therefore when the payment was attempted the payment got rejected."

Me:

"So are you saying my bank would have cancelled the Direct Debit setup with eBay?"

eBay:

"As I see that it hass been more than 12 months that the Direct Debit has not been used your bbank would have cancelled the Direct Debit setup."

I then found info on dormancy rules and which states that it is the organisation (eBay) responsibility to inform the consumer that the Direct Debit is due to expire and arrange for a new Direct Debit or an alternative payment method.

eBay then replied with:

"In this case we are recipient of the money and you are the consumer of the bank and your bank need to let you know this."

After I explained what 'organisation' meant in this case I received:

"I understand that you have read the rules and am not that good with the legal aspects, I am just re iterating what out policies are, if you wish to discuss this further, I will provide you with the details of the legal department and they will assist you further."

I know this is only a fiver but it's the principal. Is there anything I can actually do?

Goldiegirl

I think the only thing you can do is treat it as a learning experience.

You now know that a direct debit will be deleted from the banks records if it's not used for 12 months, so set a new DD up, and keep it active, then you'll not have this situation again.

Principles are all well and good, but they mean that you expand a lot of time and effort about things that probably don't matter that much at all.

mac944

Unfortunately if I don't sell anything on eBay for a 12 month period then I have no way of keeping it a DD active that's why companies that have setup DD are obliged to remind their customers to setup a new DD or arrange an alternative payment method after 12 months.

Rather than reminding their customers it appears eBay would rather change a fee for their own incompetence.

If credit card companies and and other organisations have setup a system that automatically reminds customers when a new DD needs to be setup or alternative payment arranged then I don't see why eBay can't. But more importantly they could have simply removed the option from my account and not attempted to take a DD knowing that no payments had been made within a 12 month period.

You're right, it doesn't mean all that much, it's £5 but a company of that size shouldn't be able to get away with this sort of behaviour. If it was a bank I could complain to an ombudsmen but eBay seem to just do as they please, very annoying.

_Andy_

Whilst I get your point about it being the principle, you're risking investing way too much time into trying to get back £5 IMO.

magpiecottage

You could ask the bank why it was refused and point out that you have incurred a £5 charge as a result of its "error".