Paying company by direct bank transfer in advance

Tumtitums

I am looking to hire a removal company however the most suitable one wants payment direct to their bank account in advance of doing the job. I would prefer to pay by card or cash on the day aor pay after the job is done .  i always thought that if you pay direct to a persons bank account you have no consumer rights ie if something goes wrong your bank cant get the money back .

If you pay a business directly to their bank account then what are your consumer rights ?
Is there anything i can do to protect myself if i need to make a claim because the service wasnt up to scratch ?

Thanks

TELLIT01

Payment by bank transfer is basically classed as a cash payment and you have none of the protection which comes when you pay by debit or credit card. 

What is the basis for saying they are the most suitable?  I certainly wouldn't be happy about paying the full amount before the work is done, whether that be by card or bank transfer.  Offer to pay a deposit and the rest on the day.  If they don't agree to that, I would look elsewhere.

user1977

Your consumer rights as against the company are not affected. So you'd have just as much right e.g. to sue them after the event. But what you wouldn't have are any additional rights to claim against e.g. your credit card company as an alternative.

soolin

You still have rights - nothing can take them away from you, what you don't have is any easy way of getting your money back if it goes wrong. You are basically giving them cash.

Personally , and I'm sure many will disagree, I tread carefully around any legitimate business that will only take an upfront unsafe payment method.

Will they negotiate at all, perhaps a card payment deposit up front and the balance by BT after job completed, or can you choose a different company that does take a safer form of payment or one that takes just a deposit in advance?

Aylesbury_Duck

Find a company that lets you pay as you want to.  You say they're the most suitable, but perhaps they're not if you're unhappy with the payment terms.

Tumtitums

They are now saying i can pay by card via stripe. Is that better in terms of getting money back ?

Aylesbury_Duck

I don't know much about Stripe.  Is it like a PayPal service?  If so, then it's not great because it breaks the link between your card and the retailer.

Alderbank

Yes, very like PayPal apparently.
Regular MSE readers might recall that our own Martin Lewis did an investigation into this very subject of whether paying by Stripe (or similar services) broke the link between card and retailer.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2017/04/revealed-section-75-credit-card-protection-may-fail-due-to-payment-processing-loophole---shoppers-beware/

Perhaps surprisingly he said that Stripe would not tell him, major banks like Lloyds Banking Group did not seem to know and there was no definitive answer.
At the time, 5 years ago, he said that because of its importance to consumers he would keep pressing for an answer .

Olinda99

Tumtitums said:

They are now saying i can pay by card via stripe. Is that better in terms of getting money back ?

It is certainly better than paying by bank transfer - at least you stand a chance if things go wrong.

Anyway, it is my understanding that you are covered if the merchant uses a payment aggregator eg Stripe, Paypal, Worldpay etc to just process your payment. In fact I think all merchants use some form of payment aggregator. Where you are not covered is if you eg log on to your Paypal account and pay - that is definitely breaking the link. If, however, you just give the merchant your card number and they use Paypal, Stripe or whoever in the background then you are covered.

But I think it is not 100% tested.

Jonboy_1984

At work we offer Stripe as our basic card processing merchant service, as a replacement for Barclaycard merchant service that we used previously, and are subject to all the usual chargeback and S-75 rules.

We can also offer to process PayPal to customers (and could offer Klarna pay in three via the same service if we chose), customers doing so would break the card service protections in favour of these services own dispute resolution if we failed to resolve an issue.

Tumtitums

Jonboy_1984 said:

At work we offer Stripe as our basic card processing merchant service, as a replacement for Barclaycard merchant service that we used previously, and are subject to all the usual chargeback and S-75 rules.

We can also offer to process PayPal to customers (and could offer Klarna pay in three via the same service if we chose), customers doing so would break the card service protections in favour of these services own dispute resolution if we failed to resolve an issue.

so its best to pay by the stripe weblink ?