Abbey have taken £800+ out of my account for a holiday 1.5 years ago

milkydrink

Well they didn't take it in Feb 28th - they made a mistake (with EVERYONE who paid on this day) they had to recall (as they didn't do it right on Feb 06) the money from everyones accounts again a few weeks later. So it actually was paid March or April 06.

BUT all those payments have been called again in June 07, First Choice admitted I'm not the only person thats been hit by it.

magyar

kimevans wrote: »

First choice admitted that I have paid in full for the holiday last year.
The same bug that caused a payment problem in Feb 06, has caused loads of people to be re charged for the same holiday 18 months later.

If that's the case, then they're completely liable for any reasonable costs you've incurred. You had a contract with them and they were in breach of it by charging you twice as much.

Getting them money from them might be difficult, but in principle they should repay any charges incurred by your bank and your reasonable costs incurred in putting the situation right.

Let me know how you got on.

magyar

One final note - you say you're 'going to see them': make sure that whatever you get told, promised or otherwise is written down, even if it's just hand-written on company-headed paper.

Note who you speak to as well.

mcwarre

Sue them immediately via the small claims court; that'll get their attention

meerustar

Don't go to see them until you have EVERY BIT OF PAPERWORK showing that you have already paid for the holiday.

They CC company may well charge you £10 for statements, but it will be £10 well spent if you have these when you go to see First Choice.

milkydrink

Already been to see them.
They said provide them with proof of every charge & streamline (I think thats who they said does their card transactions) will have to refund me.

NEVER PAY FIRST CHOICE BY CARD, DO IT BY CASH OR CHEQUE, note to myself for the future!!!

milkydrink

This is my second email from First Choice, does it sound like they are denying responsibility to you?

I need to obtain proof that your credit card or bank account was debited in
June 2006, for the delayed February transaction and again in June 2007.
At this stage I cannot establish why this has occurred until I have more
information. A transaction is usually debited when a "file" with the
transaction details is passed to the card issuer, we have not submitted a
file since June 2006 with this information. At this stage I believe this
has not happened from our end. It is highly unusual for this type of error
to occur.

The authorisation code is not something the customer sees, this works like
an identification number for the transaction.
I will be happy to go through some of the transactional data with your
bank, due to data protection, this can only be done if you authorise the
bank to discuss this with me.

I did a search on our system for the card number ending 5356, which your
husband holds and this has not been used.

I will try and resolve as much of this today as I can for you,
unfortunately today is my last day at First Choice. I have updated my
manager with all of the details relating to this issue and she will ensure
this is resolved to a satisfactory conclusion.

On the matter of your bank charges, I can't believe your bank want to
charge yet another £10.00 when they have already charged you for a
transaction you did not authorise them to take.

That last paragraph, really sounds like they are blaming the bank.
How can they want proof of the debit, they photocopied my bankstatement Wednesday??????

magyar

Hmm... it sounds to me like they don't know what's happened, although they're obviously suggesting that it's your bank's error.

Clearly you can't really add much to the process so you'll probably have to consent to them talking to your bank.

So do you have all the paperwork now? To be clear, I think you need to ask your bank for a copy of Feb 06 - Jun 07 which should show the two transactions.

Once you have those, you will have conclusively proven to First Choice that you paid them twice for that holiday. First Choice should then refund your money, and any charges incurred. Your contract is with them, not anyone else.

It is then for First Choice to investigate this and, if they can prove that it was the bank's fault (or this 'Streamline' company) then it's up to them to get the money from them.

But I must stress, if you don't have the Feb 06 - Jun 07 statements, get them, even if your bank is charging for them, as it's money well spent.

milkydrink

Another odd thing.
Its dated as 4th June 07 on the statement, BUT sandwiched between two transactions that happened on 2nd July 07.

Now you might think thats just a printing error. They told us about this First Choice trying to take £800+ on the 27th June, we told them NOT to pay it as it must be a mistake as we had had that holiday the previous year & not ordered any more First Choice holidays.

We contacted First Choice who claimed NOT to know anything about it & said it was nothing to do with them?, their accounts department rang the next day (the 29th July) to again confirm it wasn't First Choice.

Now silly us we assumed that as we had forbid our bank to pay & First Choice said we didn't owe it then all was OK, WRONG.

About two weeks later we start getting letters from the bank bouncing direct debits in every direction.

Now I think they paid the money out on the 2 July 07, as this is the date range that the transactions are slotted between. But when we recieved the statement, they BACKDATED the payment to the 4th June, but still show it on the statement as between 2th July & have adjusted our account to show us as over our overdraft since 4th June, thereby our bank charges are huge, nearly £1,000 & growing daily.

God, when I write it out here, it sounds really fishy what they are doing, doesn't it.
Why backdate it nearly a month?

magyar

It does all sound very weird and you almost need to sit in a room with someone from First Choice and someone from your bank.

Get the statements from Feb 06 - Jun 07 and post back when you've got them.