standing order paid to ??

mugless

hi I am writing on behalf of a friend (honest:) ).I will keep it as brief as possible and hopefully not miss out any important parts.

in 2006 she took out a warranty for her skybox with a company she thought was related to sky tv (it wasn't)- £6.99 a month

over the years this increased to £9.99 a month - and she did not receive paperwork re the increase, nor anything re the warranty- only the very original documentation

Yesterday she finally had need to contact them as her sky box stopped working. (yep, 11 years !) to find the telephone no. etc didn't work.

she did a bit of digging around and was told (by whom I do not know) that a similar named company had taken over . But she rang them and they denied any knowledge of her warranty, or payments and checked via her policy number and postcode. - she said they seemed genuine and had never heard of the original company.

I then did some digging around for her - to find the company had indeed gone into liquidation in 2010 as the FSA hadn't given them approval to operate as "an insurance" business. - so wheres her money been going????

I suggested she go to the bank (Barclays) and find out where her money had been going and she did this morning. Whilst pleasant, the bank were next to useless and after nearly 3 hours all she came out of there with was a sort code and acc. number (no name) of where the money had been going to. After a lot of more digging around I found out interestingly, this sort code is linked to Barclays customer services.

what should be her next move?
Back to the bank? (I would go with her this time)
contact banks customer services?
Obudsman?
Trading standards?

I have lots of questions, like, if the original company went into liquidation, surely that bank acc. would be frozen so the bank acc. they have been paying money into must be different to the one she authorised in 2006. Does that make it a bank error? it looks like they have been paying the money somewhere without authorisation.

Any advice would be most welcome. Thanking you in advance.

(please not negative comments, yes, she should have had abetter handle on her payments etc etc... but she genuinely thought she was paying her money into a branch of sky tv, when they contacted her back in 2006 they certainly implied such - and only now have we found out that was their practice and they are in no way connected to sky)

Zanderman

This may not help much but I'd start by stopping calling it a Standing Order. If the recipient changed the amounts paid it must be either a Direct Debit or a Continuous Payment Authority.

Standing Orders are completely controlled by the account holder - only they can change them. So if it increased from £6.99 to £9.99 and was an SO the increase must have been implemented by your friend. If she didn't change it it's not an SO.

DDs or CPAs are authorities given by the account holder to the recipient - and they control those.

eddddy

When a firm goes into liquidation, it's quite possible for another firm to buy their business - and in this case, continue your friend's contract.

But if there was misrepresentation, a breach of contract - or even fraud (See: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/swansea-con-artists-who-scammed-6706466) - there may or may not be some steps your friend can take.

As Zandeman says, it's relevant whether it's a direct debit or continuous payment authority.

For example, if it's a DD, changing the fee from £6.99 to £9.99 without notification would be a breach of the rules - and an indemnity claim might be possible.

robatwork

Please clarify as above that this was in fact a Direct Debit and not a SO.

Then can you name the original and "similar named" companies - people on here may well be better diggers than you and able to unearth some useful information in her quest for a refund.

McKneff

On tv yesterday a whole company was jailed for fraud because they were masquerading as Sky

datlex

Zanderman wrote: »

This may not help much but I'd start by stopping calling it a Standing Order. If the recipient changed the amounts paid it must be either a Direct Debit or a Continuous Payment Authority.

Standing Orders are completely controlled by the account holder - only they can change them. So if it increased from £6.99 to £9.99 and was an SO the increase must have been implemented by your friend. If she didn't change it it's not an SO.

DDs or CPAs are authorities given by the account holder to the recipient - and they control those.

until fairly recently CPAs could not be stopped by the account holder. Nowadays they can be https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/continuous-payment-authorities-it-your-right-cancel