Debenhams (New Day) Cancelling Old Direct Debit Warning

Mr_Goodkat

Hi All

Just a word of warning to check you still have an active direct debit in place with Debenhams (New Day) if you cancel an old direct debit mandate.

I could be the only person who has suffered this and I have raised it as a complaint but wanted to give people a heads up in case you went through this specific scenario.

Last year I did a balance transfer to my existing Debenhams (New Day) MasterCard as a a balance transfer was expiring elsewhere and New Day were offering 12 months 0% with a fee of under 1% so the money could earn more elsewhere.

I set up a DD from my First Direct bank account for a fixed sum every month and this was taken for a few months.

I then switched a recently 5% expired Nationwide Flex Direct to the Co-Op account for the £150 switch incentive plus £4 a month every day rewards. As well as the usual Tesco savings direct debits I decided to use the Debenhams Monthly payment as a direct debit on the new Co-Op account to help meet the 4 DD criteria for the incentive and rewards.

I changed the direct debit account details on the Debenhams (New Day) online portal and the direct debits came out of my Co-Op account as planned.

Fast forward to January this year and on a bit of post Christmas account cleaning I notice the direct debit was still showing on my First Direct account even though it had not been collected for a number of months and was coming out of the Co-Op successfully so I cancelled it through internet banking.

Today a letter from New Day arrives confirming I have cancelled my direct debit.

I decided to check both Debenhams (New Day) and the Co-Op online and you will have guessed where this is going like I did that my active direct debit from my Co-Op account has been cancelled!

I phoned Debenhams (New Day) and they have reinstated the direct debit but obviously it won't now be taken this month so I will have to make a manual payment - fortunately I have five not four DDs on the Co-Op account so I will still get my everyday rewards and a manual payment will mean I don't get a missed payment and lose the 0%.

Like I say it could just be me who has had this as is a quite specific scenario but shows utter incompetence at New Day so if you do something similar be sure to check.

datlex

Sorry do you mean when you cancelled the direct debit showing on your FD account, it sent a message to New Day saying your DD was cancelled?

molerat

datlex wrote: »

Sorry do you mean when you cancelled the direct debit showing on your FD account, it sent a message to New Day saying your DD was cancelled?

I believe that is what the OP is saying. Cancel old DD with the bank, bank tells originator DD is cancelled, originator does not check where message comes from so cancels current DD with other bank. Idiots springs to mind.

Sparx

Yeah usually when this happens at my workplace, it automatically looks up the originating bank details - against the current bank details for the direct debit.

If they don't match we leave the direct debit as 'active' as this usually indicates the cancelled DD notice is for the old details we held. Sounds like Debenhams are not that smart then.

Mr_Goodkat

molerat wrote: »

I believe that is what the OP is saying. Cancel old DD with the bank, bank tells originator DD is cancelled, originator does not check where message comes from so cancels current DD with other bank. Idiots springs to mind.

Yes this is exactly what happened.

Fortunately I anticipated their idiocy so won't cause me any problems but others might not be so lucky so just a warning for people who have similar circumstances!

Mr_Goodkat

Sparx wrote: »

Yeah usually when this happens at my workplace, it automatically looks up the originating bank details - against the current bank details for the direct debit.

If they don't match we leave the direct debit as 'active' as this usually indicates the cancelled DD notice is for the old details we held. Sounds like Debenhams are not that smart then.

That is what I expected Debenhams/New Day to do but either their systems are not clever enough to identify this or worse still its a manual process and just down to human error!