Warning: Beware Unwanted Additional Products on Direct Debits

Cherry_Hinton_Blue

The football club I support has a direct debit payment scheme for season tickets, which cost from around £100 up to nearly £1000. Last year it introduced an automatic rollover system for direct debit users, whereby your season ticket was automatically renewed for the next season unless you opted out.

A bit presumptuous, but I imagine that if anybody who didn't intend to renew their season ticket ended up with one anyway, the club would have sorted it out with them.

But this season, something quite sinister happened. A £120 cash subscription "to support the club's youth academy" was added on to season ticket renewal schedules without notice. This was not an opt-in donation. It was up to season ticket holders to opt out of it, in writing. Many - perhaps most - supporters have quickly done so, but I'm sure that hundreds, if not thousands, of supporters will not have noticed.

The lesson here is that it appears to be legal for organisations to load unwanted products onto a direct debit, and make it your responsibility to say no. You have to read the payment schedule they send you.

Where might this stop? Could the £120 cash they've tried to get out of customers have been £1200 and still been legal? Or £12000?

Ectophile

It depends on whether they wrote to you to tell you that the extra payment would be added.

If you read a Direct Debit form, it essentially gives the other party blanket permission to take whatever money they want out of your account, whenever they want.

However, the Direct Debit Guarantee requires a company to inform you beforehand how much the debit will be. If they fail to do that, you can go to your bank, and claim back a refund of the money they have taken.

jonnyd281

If this is Ipswich Town season tickets there was a thing on Look East tonight about this, apparently there are details about stopping it on the clubs website about making sure you didn't pay it.

Cherry_Hinton_Blue

Yep, it was Ipswich Town. The point I was trying to make, however, was to remind people that - as Ectophile says - anyone with a Direct Debit mandate can take out whatever they want from your account, and the onus is on you to spot what they've done from the billing schedule, and make the effort to cancel it.

In our case, as season ticket holders, the football club clearly said: "do nothing and we'll renew your ticket for next season", suggesting that you'd be getting exactly the same product, and not mentioning that they'd be taking an extra £120 in cash. Fortunately supporters have made enough fuss for the local media to take an interest, and the information about what's happened will have got through to most supporters. But sadly, I suspect, not all.

wealdroam

Cherry_Hinton_Blue wrote: »

The point I was trying to make, however, was to remind people that - as Ectophile says - anyone with a Direct Debit mandate can take out whatever they want from your account, and the onus is on you to spot what they've done from the billing schedule, and make the effort to cancel it.

That's not quite the whole story.

The Direct Debit Guarantee also requires the 'taker' to advise the payer whenever the amount to be taken changes.

From the DD Guarantee:

If there are any changes to the amount, date or frequency of your Direct Debit the organisation will notify you (normally 10 working days) in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed.

Anyway, this thread should be on The Praise, Vent & Warnings board.