Blocking Ocado Smartpass

ramyst

I used to be a regular Ocado shopper and made use of their smartpass scheme. One day towards the start of this year I received an email telling me that they were going to increase the price from £2 per month to £5 a month. At this point I asked them to cancel the plan. I then spent the next month or so exchanging emails with them trying to cancel, each time I'd get a reply asking for some different information to confirm my identity, until I had provided my details three or four times over. It was clear they were using classic sales tactics to make me give up on cancelling, wasting my time until I gave up.

Eventually I did give up and asked my bank Nationwide, to block future payments as they were being taken without my permission. The issue is the payment was a recurring card payment not a direct debit. But Nationwide explain that that it can still be cancelled on the website. I'm not allowed to post a link but if you google "nationwide block recurring payment" it's the top result.

Nationwide replied saying the payment had been blocked, great I thought.

Two weeks later though I get a cheerful email from Ocado saying "We have successfully taken your payment, thanks!", sure enough I can see £4.99 on my bank statement. I get in touch with Nationwide again and they tell me "Visa refused your request to block the payments" and that the only thing they could do would be to cancel my card as lost/stolen and asking if I give my permission for them to do this.

Obviously annoyed now I replied giving Nationwide the go ahead to cancel my card. So I stop using my card (not wanting to get caught using a card reported as lost) but two weeks go by and no further response, no new card. I send another message asking if my new card has been sent out and my old one cancelled. No response, a week later another cheerful email from Ocado telling me they have successfully charged me again.

Nationwide are blatantly ignoring me now and the only option I can see is to call the lost stolen number on the card and report it as lost but my fear was that's just going to confuse the original matter but now having being charged twice without permission I'm out of better options.

xylophone

Nationwide are blatantly ignoring me now

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/recurring-payments

You have a LEGAL RIGHT to have payments cancelled.
Even if companies refuse, banks MUST cancel them for you.

alanq

I haven't had any issues cancelling Ocado Smartpass when coming to the end of an offer period. They simply made a new offer to try to retain my business and when I declined that was the end of the matter.

I have however ceased using Ocado after some months of pointing out erroneous pricing on the website that I was repeatedly told would be fixed shortly. It had still not been fixed by the time I left having reported the issue to Trading Standards.

alanq

Nationwide should have invoked VISA charge back as well as blocking future payments.