Direct Debits-falsely set-up on my account

industriegrafik

Hi,
Troublingly a third party has set-up several online direct debits against my Bank account without my consent with my personal details. This has happened over the last two days. Fortunately I noticed the DD’s and have subsequently cancelled them. The bank doesn’t seem to have a solid verification process in place or a means to change my data. Has anyone got any tips or tricks to combat this? apart from that is changing banks! Thanks in advance…

Daliah

It happens very occasionally, possibly by mistake, as all that's needed for setting up a DD is a sort code and account number. The UK banks process literally several billions of DDs each year, and the vast majority are genuine.

If you are unfortunate enough to find an unauthorised DD on your account, whether it is due to an error or malicious, the Direct Debit Guarantee protects you against any losses.

eskbanker

industriegrafik said:

Troublingly a third party has set-up several online direct debits against my Bank account without my consent with my personal details.

Do you just mean your account details or actual personal data such as address, DOB, etc?

If the latter then you should be more vigilant than usual in the event of identity theft activity - check each of your credit files regularly and consider signing up to the CIFAS protective registration service....

Olinda99

You need to be a direct debit originator to set up.direct debits. This includes getting a Service User Number number. and having a turnover typically in excess of 1 million.

Thrugelmir

Report the 3rd party to https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

phillw

industriegrafik said:

Troublingly a third party has set-up several online direct debits against my Bank account without my consent with my personal details.

Someone may have misread their sort code account number when setting up a DD, someone somewhere could be wondering why their DD have just been cancelled.

Who were the DD being paid to?

How do you think they could robustly check that it was you that had authorized the DD?

soulsaver

Olinda99 said:

You need to be a direct debit originator to set up.direct debits. This includes getting a Service User Number number. and having a turnover typically in excess of 1 million.

Irrelevant (and probably incorrect) if you can set up a DD to your account with that originator - like Post Office banking amongst other organisations.
small direct debits - Search (bing.com)

masonic

Olinda99 said:

You need to be a direct debit originator to set up.direct debits. This includes getting a Service User Number number. and having a turnover typically in excess of 1 million.

Services like GoCardless and Stripe collect DDs on behalf of a variety of small businesses down to sole traders.

eskbanker

Olinda99 said:

You need to be a direct debit originator to set up.direct debits. This includes getting a Service User Number number. and having a turnover typically in excess of 1 million.

'Setting up direct debits' is unhelpfully vague and ambiguous terminology in the context of this thread!

In common parlance, this means creating a direct debit mandate and/or executing subsequent transactions under it to transmit funds to a third party, and this can be done by anyone, although, as above, the DD guarantee protects the account holder if this was unauthorised.

On the other hand, establishing the facility to receive payments by direct debit is a different story, which does involve the constraints you refer to, but is unrelated to the scenario discussed in this thread....

HobgoblinBT

Who are the companies paid via the DDs? Eg phone companies, sky etc?  The reason for asking is that some are more likely to have been set up fraudulently rather than as an honest mistake.

Olinda99

will try and make my second post a bit less controversial !