Had money taken from your account without permission?

Aquamania

ericctheking wrote: »

Erudio student loans.
Many victims. They don't even inform people they are taking a direct debit and the amount.
They take money when they are not entitled to it then lie on the phone about refunds.

You are fully covered by the terms of the Direct Debit Guarantee.

Make a claim direct to your bank who will be required to refund you in full immediately.

Where amounts have been taken erroneously (for any reason) the Service User (Originator) should not be refunding directly, but referring you to the DD guarantee.

ericctheking

Aquamania wrote: »

You are fully covered by the terms of the Direct Debit Guarantee.

Make a claim direct to your bank who will be required to refund you in full immediately.

Where amounts have been taken erroneously (for any reason) the Service User (Originator) should not be refunding directly, but referring you to the DD guarantee.

But you aren't covered for any fees or charges from going overdrawn etc. only the amount of the direct debit?

It is a shame Erudio student loans are such lieing toe-rags.
Then again BIS did due diligence (sarcasm) when they sold people's student loans (people furfilling the terms and conditions of the loan) to these back street debt collectors.

YorkshireBoy

ericctheking wrote: »

But you aren't covered for any fees or charges from going overdrawn etc. only the amount of the direct debit?

No, you're covered (under the PSRs) for all consequential losses, ie you should be put back in the position you were prior to the unauthorised transaction.

Aquamania

^
What YorkshireBoy says

Note that consequential losses may not be refunded immediately by your bank, but they will be once the Service User (Originator) pays the bank those losses, which should be within 14 days at most.

I cannot comment on the particular company/business you refer to, but would advise that if they are as bad as you claim, and there are enough (undisputed) claims made against them under the terms of the Direct Debit Guarantee, their sponsoring bank may remove their sponsorship (which in simple terms means the business will no longer be permitted to use the Direct Debit Scheme which depends on 100% Payer confidence for it's continued operation)

Archi_Bald

Almost all of the examples listed are cases of authorised payments. It's just the account holders didn't realise / had forgotten that they had given authorisation, and/or were not aware how to cancel an existing authorisation, and how to claim money back.

I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of automatically taken payments fall into this category, and that only a very small percentage are genuinely unauthorised payments.

To improve the situation, there needs to be a combination of

1. retailers making it much clearer when continuous payments are being authorised
2. account holders checking their bank statements at least once a month
3. account holders keeping a record (e.g. in a personal finance package) of the commitments they have made

joncombe

Aquamania wrote: »

You are fully covered by the terms of the Direct Debit Guarantee.

Make a claim direct to your bank who will be required to refund you in full immediately.

Indeed, but it doesn't escape the fact the system *is* flawed. You might get the money back immediatly for the fradulant transaction, but what about other payments that wern't made and should have been because the fraudlant transaction reduced your balance to the point you didn't have enough funds? What about the damage to reputation and credit ratings? What if you are away from home and need the money to get home for a taxi or train (particularly if you notice it at the time the bank is closed).

It should be impossible for an organisation to re-instate a direct debit which has been cancelled unless they can prove the customer has approved it being re-instated. Yet the Direct Debit system allows this to happen with no checks. Which means cancelling a Direct Debit is largely pointless because the merchant can just re-instate it without the customers knowledge and take money anyway.

TokSik

I think a good one for the FCA to look at would be Landlords / Housing Associations (HA's) - where they get a Direct Debit agreement for the rental amount, then proceed to take far more than that to build up a 2-3 month buffer (for their own financial gain & administrative convenience). To give you an example, my own HA (Guinness Trust) sent me a rent statement a couple of years ago, and they had built up an advance rental amount that came to over twice my monthly rent. I threatened them with legal action if they didn't desist the practice (I used to be a Money Adviser at Bedford CAB, so I'm more aware than most of the laws relating to unauthorised deductions).
My view is that these organisations take far more than has been agreed. When challenged, they generally do pay back the capital amount, but then neglect to return the interest they have earned on your money.
Consider this - a Housing Association has 20,000 homes on which they charge rents each month of £400 - £700. Over the course of a year, they gradually take more than they should be taking to build up an advance of rents of over 2 months. So at the end of the year they have unlawfully taken (lets say with an average rent of £500) - x 20,000 = £10,000,000 (yeah, that's £10 MILLION). They can reasonably take a single months worth of rent in advance, but not more.
If they've stashed that in some higher than normal interest account, how much are THEY getting in interest.
There have been frauds like this where people have taken a few pennies here and there, which over a period of time built up to huge amounts of money. In my view, this is no different to those frauds, and on that basis, the FCA should investigate these types of practice, and should not fail to use the Criminal law to prosecute.
From some of the friends I've spoken to, this is a widespread practice, also done to a similar degree by the energy companies, taking far more than the cost of energy used in advance.

eskbanker

TokSik wrote: »

My view is that these organisations take far more than has been agreed.
[...]
From some of the friends I've spoken to, this is a widespread practice, also done to a similar degree by the energy companies, taking far more than the cost of energy used in advance.

My view is that this is a generalisation - under the Direct Debit Guarantee firms have to advise amounts to be taken in advance: "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".

Without knowing more about your specific issue, I'd have thought that it would be difficult for organisations to justify a DD amount that differs from monthly rental on an ongoing basis - it's different for energy companies where usage (and therefore cost) will be inherently variable and so they have to work with estimates.

If any organisation is in breach of the DD guarantee, you can take it up via your bank or the organisation itself, the FCA should only be a last resort....

sue.lewis

I am currently in dispute with my bank over Money taken by standing order, I think this gets found the direct debit guarantee issue. I wrote a cheque for some advertising, changed my mind and cancelled the cheque (long story and not for here but I can't cancel as its a business to business agreement not covered by doorstep selling regulations with Leisure Medical UK -don't go there!) they took the sort code and account number from my cheque and set up a standing order. Bank says it's not fraud as I have a previous contract with them, that I cancelled. I pointed out I did not agree to a standing order and still want to know how they managed to take funds from my account without my permission. The bank have put a note on my file to stop future payments but say they can't do anything to refund the payment already taken.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

sue.lewis wrote: »

...they took the sort code and account number from my cheque and set up a standing order...

That's strange. As far as I am aware, only the account holder can set up a standing order.