Being wrongfully charged is affecting my credit score - any advice is appreciated!

ert45

Hi everyone,

I’ve been having an awful experience with Three mobile for the past four months, and I would really appreciate anyone’s advice or suggestions of what to do. 

Towards the end of last year, I ordered a new phone from Three, on a monthly repayment plan. When the phone arrived, it had been opened and very clearly used, and not the new phone that I had ordered, so I returned it to Three within their time window, asked to cancel the plan within the cooling off period, and bought a new phone elsewhere. Three acknowledged receipt of the returned phone, and said that they would cancel the device repayment plan. However, they did not do this and kept on charging me for the device monthly payment. 

Every time I rang Three, they said that they had cancelled the plan and denied that they were still charging me for the device, even though the payments were literally coming out of my bank account. I have rung them so many times asking them to cancel it, and they just tell me that it’s already cancelled. When I log in to my Three account online, it says that the contract has been cancelled and that the balance is zero, but the payments were still being taken from my bank account every month. The recent charges are not shown on my online account. The people on the Three phone lines just tell me to email my proof of the payments still being taken to their proofs account, which I have done, but I have not received any response or follow-up. 

After months of being wrongly charged, and countless phone calls to Three where they just tell me I’m not being charged when I literally am, last week I decided to cancel the direct debit from my end so that they can no longer take money in error.

However, I have now received an email from Three telling me that because I have cancelled the direct debit, I am now behind on payments and they are going to report it and it will affect my credit score!

I really don’t know what to do, because the staff at Three just tell me it’s not happening, when it literally is. I would really appreciate any advice on how to get Three to cancel the payment requests so that it doesn’t affect my credit score! And ideally I would also like to be refunded for the money that they have taken in error over the past few months, but the credit score is the more pressing matter. 

Thank you so much in advance for any suggestions on what I could try to solve this!

Nasqueron

Ignore the fake credit score

Ring them and demand they open a formal complaint, reinstate the DD for the moment as you don't want missed payments. If they don't resolve it, the regulator will and you should get your money back as well

etienneg

You might expect a phone provider to respond to your many phone calls, but clearly that's not happening. You need to raise a formal complaint. But first make sure you look up Three's formal complaint procedure and make sure you follow it to the letter. If there's an option to make the complaint in writing (email, online form or even 'old fashioned' post), do this rather than ringing, as this will give you a record of what's happened should they not follow their complaints procedure properly.

It's a pity you cancelled the DD. This is not a good way to proceed. Whilst it stops money being taken, it does nothing to sort out the underlying issue and thus has other consequences, as you have found. As recommended by Nasqueron, reinstate the DD for the time being if you can.

Nasqueron

etienneg said:

You might expect a phone provider to respond to your many phone calls, but clearly that's not happening. You need to raise a formal complaint. But first make sure you look up Three's formal complaint procedure and make sure you follow it to the letter. If there's an option to make the complaint in writing (email, online form or even 'old fashioned' post), do this rather than ringing, as this will give you a record of what's happened should they not follow their complaints procedure properly.

It's a pity you cancelled the DD. This is not a good way to proceed. Whilst it stops money being taken, it does nothing to sort out the underlying issue and thus has other consequences, as you have found. As recommended by Nasqueron, reinstate the DD for the time being if you can.

To be fair, these days you can raise a formal complaint even via a chat bot if you are in your account, I did this with M&S before. They can't refuse a complaint just because you missed a word or a step. Three have a live chat complaint option as well as call or post or complaints form all of which will work to raise a complaint. Even over the phone you can ask for a case reference and ask the staff member name/record the call time as needed

https://www.three.co.uk/support/complaints/how-to-complain 

penners324

Are the account numbers the same? The DD will have the account number on it.

macman

Why did you not cancel the DD once they had taken what you believed to be the final payment? The payee can  stop drawing on it: but only the account holder can cancel it.
Your credit score is utterly inconsequential, because it's a fake score that only you can see. Lenders neither use them not can access them.