Company took payment 6 months late_TFL

hanario

Hi,

I purchase monthly TFL travelcard's from the ticket machines.
In December I noticed 2 payments of £141 had been taken 2 weeks apart.
Assuming this was a duplicate payment i contacted TFL and my bank.

My bank were very helpful and refunded me the money while they investigated.

However I have only just received a response to my TFL query stating that the payment taken was actually a payment for June, which they did not take at the time due to a system error.

This has left me stuck, and now facing bank charges. (due to Christmas I am on 0 till payday)

Upon checking my statement, they are correct- there is no payment for June. However they did not alert me to this or give me any warning they were going to take the payment at a later date so I was completely unable to budget for this.

I realise I do indeed owe them this money, but is there not a protocol for taking payment 6 months late?

Please see below for TFL's email response to my query.
Any advice at all will be very much appreciated!
I am more alarmed that this was apparently an issue for all travel card buyers on this date, yet TFL did not feel the need to inform the public before or after they eventually took payment.



TFL:
Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you regarding your charge at the beginning of December. I am sorry for the inconvenience this delay has caused.

Regretfully, customers who purchased a Travelcard at a DLR station on June 16 were not charged for the item until the first week of December. Due to a technical issue, payments were requested on Dec 1 and taken from customers' bank accounts around December 11. Sadly this was an automated process and I am sorry that we were not able to inform customers in advance.

To summarise, the charge from your bank account in December relates to the monthly Travelcard you purchased at West Silvertown on June 16. If you check your bank statement for June you will notice that you were not charged for this item at that time.

I hope this clarifies things and I apologise again for any inconvenience this matter may have caused. Please contact us again if you need any further assistance or if you would prefer to talk to us about this matter, please call us on 0343 222 1234.

gik

From memory they can 'take' money owed up to six years later. However after six months they should inform you they intend to do so. In your case it's inside the six months.

InsideInsurance

UK scheme rules give them 180 days to request the payment.

If you say payment was on 16th June and payment request was on 1st December then that is 168 days and so they are within the time limit. If it had been 181 days or more then a chargeback can be done. The debt is still owed but they have to get you to reauthorise the payment before they can take it via this card

hanario

Thank you both for your quick replies!

I was struggling to find any information online about this, so that's incredibly helpful.

Unfortunately it seems there is nothing I can do to stop my charges but at least I now know that it was legal and can stop worrying about fighting it.
I will be sure to monitor these payments more closely in the future.

thanks again

agrinnall

hanario wrote: »

I will be sure to monitor these payments more closely in the future.

This is the key. You need to take responsibility for the management of your money, and that means reconciling payments that you have made with evidence (statements) that the payment has actually been taken - I would suggest using software such as Microsoft Money to do this.

keyser666

hanario wrote: »

Thank you both for your quick replies!

I was struggling to find any information online about this, so that's incredibly helpful.

Unfortunately it seems there is nothing I can do to stop my charges but at least I now know that it was legal and can stop worrying about fighting it.
I will be sure to monitor these payments more closely in the future.

thanks again

refreshing response;)