Post Office accounts closed - yet direct debits still taken.

JustAnotherSaver

On 22nd December my sister shut down her post office savings accounts online. She didn't need these to generate the direct debits any more and their whole banking system is a PITA anyway.

Yesterday she's had the direct debit taken as normal. It shows as leaving her current account. She logs back in to her post office account yet it lists no account at all and the balance is £0. Notices this today. Since the account is closed she has no idea what the details were of that specific account to get the money back.

What gives? Why is this still being taken, and more importantly how does she get that money back?

kaMelo

She speaks to her own bank and tells them the Direct Debit was taken in error.
In line with the DD Guarantee she will receive an immediate refund

Costabit

Same thing happened to me. It was only a £5 direct debit that the Post Office took for a closed account but it took three weeks and three phone calls to the PO before it eventually reappeared in my current account. 

First call advised me that the money would appear in one of my other PO accounts ( of course that was ridiculous ) and never happened.
Second call advised me that the money would automatically bounce back into my current account , that never happened
Third call advised me that they would have to put a trace on the money and would have to actively look for it as it was in a holding account. This eventually worked and the 5£ did come back to me.
I believe that no one at the PO call center really knew what was going on so have to agree with kaMelo above and try your bank first.
Good luck

youngretired

This also happened to my sisiter last year. Same info as Costabit was giving and she did finally get the money back. She closed the account just before the DD was due, but didn't cancel the DD as didn't expect it to be taken. Make sure the DD is cancelled of her bank account after getting the money back.

JustAnotherSaver

Well in her case it was just a £1 direct debit.

It's been cancelled at the banks end now. By the sounds of it, for £1 it sounds more hassle than it's worth. She'll probably pay more than that in phone calls trying to get it back.

At least it wasn't the £55 direct debit

Thrugelmir

Direct debits are created some 10 days ahead of the due date. As Direct Debits are batch run. It's impossible to pull a single transaction. In instances of closed accounts , the money is eventually returned to the source account. Being a manual process would be delays and slower than normal processing over the Xmas holiday period. 

Always cancel direct debits well in advance to avoid such issues and having the money to hand is financially critical. 

surreysaver

I've been reducing the number of Post Office accounts. I have been cancelling the direct debits at the current account end as well as the Post Office end. 

JustAnotherSaver

kaMelo said:

She speaks to her own bank and tells them the Direct Debit was taken in error.
In line with the DD Guarantee she will receive an immediate refund

Not saying you're wrong but this is what the bank says

NOTE: Nobody asked how to cancel the direct debit. That's just a case of them not reading the message properly where they were told that the direct debit hadn't been cancelled at the banks end until after the direct debit was taken. It was assumed that closing th epost office account would close all direct debits.

Alexland

The DD Guarantee protects against bank or billing organisation error and cannot be used to address contractual disputes between the customer and the billing organisation.
If the account was closed when there were too few business days to cancel the DD then that's more of a user error. She could contact Post Office savings (they should be able to identify her from her name and address if she has lost her account number) to ask when they intend to return the money or they will probably do it eventually anyway as they will be unable to add it into a closed savings account.
Next time she should stop the DD and ideally wait to see a cycle not collect before closing the account.