My Direct Debit has been changed to a 'subscription'

DullGreyGuy

Pedro3 said:

The bank has changed the payment type from DD to SUB(scription) on my statement. I've not ben notified of any changes by the service provider!

Which bank is it? You need to understand what they mean by it... as highlighted above Halifax use SUB to present a CPA payment by debit or credit card. Barclays dont use the code at all and doesn't differentiate CPA payments from normal debit card payments (in the transaction type code anyway). 

km1500

But the OP says it is not a card transaction and that in any case they have never given the company their card number etc

born_again

km1500 said:

But the OP says it is not a card transaction and that in any case they have never given the company their card number etc

But may have, if there was any sort of upfront payment when taking out contract. Which will be stored on systems.

But swapping from a DD to a CPA seems a bit daft from mobile co's point of view. As CPA's are not reported for no payment to CRA unlike DD's. As well as both are just as easy to cancel & have exactly the same repercussions if cancelled mid contract.

Who is the mobile co?

km1500

no idea then why they would suddenly switch without warning from bank dd to card cpa, especailly as the OP has not given cpa !

RefluentBeans

km1500 said:

no idea then why they would suddenly switch without warning from bank dd to card cpa, especailly as the OP has not given cpa !

I agree - and potentially in breach of GDPR if they stored the data for longer than necessary. Also would be surprised if the mobile carrier even saw the card details - if it’s an upfront cost, it’s normally handled through a payment processor like Worldpay. 

la531983

RefluentBeans said:

I noticed a while ago that subscriptions were a thing, and my Netflix subscription is in there.

Which you would fully expect given thats taken from the debit card number, same with my Spotify subscription.

Baffled as to how the Ops mobile company have done this if he claims he has never given them his debit card number, although I suspect maybe he did at the start to pay the initial rental or handset.

DullGreyGuy

born_again said:
But swapping from a DD to a CPA seems a bit daft from mobile co's point of view. As CPA's are not reported for no payment to CRA unlike DD's. As well as both are just as easy to cancel & have exactly the same repercussions if cancelled mid contract.

Really? 

I know the FCA had a push on CPAs to banks to stop saying they cannot be cancelled etc but I'm sure we still see threads on here saying banks were making it difficult. 

Secondly with the DD guarantee it's relatively simple to clawback payments with minimal proof generally being required to prove your case. Certainly my bank just took my word that I'd cancelled a subscription but the merchant renewed it anyway. CPAs would be harder to get the funds back.

RefluentBeans said
if it’s an upfront cost, it’s normally handled through a payment processor like Worldpay. 

Really? I mean for small companies and maybe web only companies then its easier to tokenise payments and let someone like Worldpay deal with the data security side but for multi-channel providers and larger companies I'd assume they'd have implemented appropriate data security to store the card numbers themselves. 

Not looked at card payments for many years but certainly a couple of recent consumer facing clients card payments in the contact centre were fully integrated into their CRM systems and their counter fraud teams used credit card numbers as a mechanism to spot fraud (multiple unrelated people buying policies using the same card number often pointed to an unauthorised broker)

born_again

@DullGreyGuy
Will agree in some ways, as some front line call center staff seem to think they know it all, yet miss things like this.

Both Visa & Mastercard have systems that allow us to cancel a CPA, as well as proof of cancelation (email etc sent) & that then opens up chargeback rights after a CPA has been cancelled.