Talktalk £12.50 rip-off charge for rejected debit card!

petter2

My debit card was recently blocked and a new card was sent out because of fraudulent transactions.

I updated the new card details on my Talktalk account, but I was still charged a £12.50 rejected payment fee by TalkTalk.

It's an absolute rip-off, I am not aware of any other company that charges for a rejected card payment (this is not a direct-debit)! Imagine you go to a shop and your card gets denied, and they then charge £12.50 for that!

I tried to contact Talktalk via live chat but the connection dropped twice.

I will not renew my contract with a company with these kinds of business practices! Would strongly advise anyone against using them!

Neil_Jones

petter2 said:

My debit card was recently blocked and a new card was sent out because of fraudulent transactions.

I updated the new card details on my Talktalk account, but I was still charged a £12.50 rejected payment fee by TalkTalk.

It's an absolute rip-off, I am not aware of any other company that charges for a rejected card payment (this is not a direct-debit)! Imagine you go to a shop and your card gets denied, and they then charge £12.50 for that!

I tried to contact Talktalk via live chat but the connection dropped twice.

I will not renew my contract with a company with these kinds of business practices! Would strongly advise anyone against using them!

https://assets.ctfassets.net/0zd818fqktdq/51djEaxqqufBcnPw04WjZe/7933700a641750545230b14afd8fb6df/TalkTalk_Customer_Terms_and_Conditions.pdf - see section 9., in particular 9.7 -" If payment is rejected, we

may charge you a reasonable fee to cover our costs" and also 9.10.  And it's documented on the website @  https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/Late-payments/ta-p/2263379 - "f you don't pay your bill on or before your payment due date, we'll email you to remind you about the outstanding balance on your account and a late payment charge of £12.50 will be added to your next bill."  The fact you had to request a new card isn't TalkTalk's problem.

Sky's T&Cs have exactly the same sort of wording, don't pay on time it will attract late payment:

https://static.skyassets.com/contentstack/assets/blt7f2b03fd02c7fe60/bltfaabe3c471c484b9/628ca6d2d31030576a34b0fb/download?disposition=inline - section 5e.

If you're not paying by direct debit you're not exactly going to have much choice in the way of other providers, since most will insist on it.

petter2

The payment was not late though, and 12.50 are not reasonable costs for a rejected Visa debit payment attempt.

Neil_Jones

then take it up with TalkTalk, but the £12.50 late payment will be what you agreed to when you joined up in the event that situation occurred.  So if you didn't add your card before the 5th (or whatever date it was) then the payment was late.

The point remains though - if you're going to insist on payment by continuous mandate (which is what recurring card payment effectively is) you're not going to have much choice in new providers if you're not going to stay with TalkTalk.  The problem with recurring payments like this is that they can be delayed when they go out, and take a day or two to clear.  With direct debit that isn't the case, and if your payment date is the 27th for example, but as has just happened, if the 27th is a Saturday and there is a bank holiday in the way, the payment will go out on the 30th.  That is a delay on the "other" side of the system that you wouldn't get penalised for, but it will "clear" the same day.