Had money taken from your account without permission?

sue.lewis

1stPPi wrote: »

There are differences between standing orders and direct debits. Standing Orders can only be setup by the account holder, no one else. The account holder decides when it is paid and how much. If your bank has setup a standing order that did not come from you then it is fraud, as the firm who sent the request are impersonating you and the bank should not have accepted it, so the bank is liable. If they deny it contact the OFT as they have more weight than the FSA.
A direct debit is setup with the account holders consent by signing and agreeing to it. The firm/person the direct debit is to pay, has to ask your bank for payment, normally this is done electronically and automatically, and the amount you pay has to have previously been notified to you. This is even for utility companies that setup what they call a variable direct debit. If you get no joy from your bank, post their name. They might need reminding of their obligation.

Thanks, I thought this was the case. It was the security/fraud dept at the bank who decided it's not fraud but a civil matter and advised me to contact CAB.......I called to complain yesterday and they have re-opened my case and will look into it in more detail. I will contact the OFT if I don't get a satisfactory response.

Stevie_Palimo

The bank will refund against fraudulent DD'S and as for extra losses then you take this up with the Company concerned and use the Direct Debit guarantee, I did it and got the money taken out back from the bank and the end company that set the DD up basically refused to cover my costs.


Long story short I took them Court and one my case albeit not large amounts of money but I did have the pleasure of knowing that A: the Company Director was a tad peed off and B: they lost a whole lot more in money attempting to defend the said case.

kiyonebabe

Not a CPA situation but frustrating none the less:

I received an email at the weekend saying that I had made a purchase and my card had been charged, but I knew full well that I hadn't purchased anything. I checked my account and there was a transaction for a product I hadn't bought, for delivery to an address I didn't recognise. Simple answer - fraud, someone must have hacked my paypal account.

Fortunately the transaction had only taken place that day. So I raised a dispute on paypal to let them know it was fraudulent and I phoned my credit card company to tell them a fraud had occurred and not to process the transaction.

Several days later and now paypal are "investigating" with the seller and my card has been charged, with the money sitting with paypal.

Seeing as I informed everyone of the fraud within hours of it happening and the payment hadn't yet been authorised, you would think it would all get stopped at that point.

Now I'm left waiting to find out if I get the money back. It seems ridiculous.

Primrose

Not to mention the hotel recently who took an additional unauthorised payment from a recent customer's credit card after they wrote an unfavourable review on the hotel's website !

eskbanker

Primrose wrote: »

Not to mention the hotel recently who took an additional unauthorised payment from a recent customer's credit card after they wrote an unfavourable review on the hotel's website !

Not directly relevant here though, in that in this case it was apparently explicitly stated in the booking terms that "For every bad review left on any website, the group organiser will be charged a maximum £100 per review" so the hotel argues that it wasn't unauthorised as such, albeit the wording was buried within small print. However, they have, perhaps unsurprisingly, refunded the charge after the bad publicity (and/or suggestions of unfair terms, etc, from Trading Standards)!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30111525

jshalk

As a student I was shocked to read a bank statement and discover that a £500 standing order had been set up from my account. Fortunately I caught it before a second payment had been taken, but went to the bank to sort it out.

After questioning me extensively to make sure I hadn't set it up myself(!!) they said they'd look into it. Weeks later when I went back in they finally said that they'd reimburse the money to my account, but that they 'hadn't got to the bottom of the issue' and didn't know how/why it had been set up.

Doing some Google research, I discovered that the payment had been made to a letting agent, so was presumably paying for someone's rent! The company was in the same city as the opening branch, so perhaps a mistake was made on the bank's system. However, my name is not common so I'd be surprised if someone just put the wrong account details in and it went unnoticed.

I suspect that the 'we don't know why it's happened' was because the bank had made an error. How do standing orders get set up by mistake?! I'd always assumed they'd have to check both the name on the account and the account details...!

Archi_Bald

jshalk wrote: »

As a student I was shocked to read a bank statement and discover that a £500 standing order had been set up from my account. Fortunately I caught it before a second payment had been taken, but went to the bank to sort it out.

After questioning me extensively to make sure I hadn't set it up myself(!!) they said they'd look into it. Weeks later when I went back in they finally said that they'd reimburse the money to my account, but that they 'hadn't got to the bottom of the issue' and didn't know how/why it had been set up.

Doing some Google research, I discovered that the payment had been made to a letting agent, so was presumably paying for someone's rent! The company was in the same city as the opening branch, so perhaps a mistake was made on the bank's system. However, my name is not common so I'd be surprised if someone just put the wrong account details in and it went unnoticed.

I suspect that the 'we don't know why it's happened' was because the bank had made an error. How do standing orders get set up by mistake?! I'd always assumed they'd have to check both the name on the account and the account details...!

Could one of your flatmates have played a prank on you after getting hold of your bank login details?

alwaysup2

When my Orange upgrade was due they transferred me to EE. A month later Orange took a full months charge and three days later refunded the full months charge less 1 days charges...when queried they said that was the only way they could claim the 1 days line rental......utter rubbish, luckily i had the funds to cover the full months line rental but if i hadnt ( because Orange didnt tell me they were going to do this) i could easily have been hit with overdrawn charges etc.....not acceptable for a multi million pound company to behave

brewerdave

alwaysup2 wrote: »

When my Orange upgrade was due they transferred me to EE. A month later Orange took a full months charge and three days later refunded the full months charge less 1 days charges...when queried they said that was the only way they could claim the 1 days line rental......utter rubbish, luckily i had the funds to cover the full months line rental but if i hadnt ( because Orange didnt tell me they were going to do this) i could easily have been hit with overdrawn charges etc.....not acceptable for a multi million pound company to behave

...this is quite common behaviour with telecoms companies ...I had a similar problem when I left HORRANGE as my internet service provider..but I stopped them taking the full month in advance by DD and offered to pay the £2 or £3 that I owed by debit card -computer said no -they set up DD again -I cancelled it online -led to debt collectors being instructed for a couple of quid !! Inflexible or what!:rotfl:

chocky

I recently had a payment taken from my account by the AA - not a huge amount but I certainly wasn't expecting it nor had authorised it. My bank, the Co-op dealt with it quickly and efficiently. 2 days later the money was back in my account and they will now refuse any payments from the AA on my behalf. Continuous payment on debit/credit cards is a devious and underhand way of extracting money, relying as they do on people not checking their bank accounts regularly or cancelling policies. If there cant be more transparency and accountability, then I personally would like to see them banned