Double charged, assured money wouldn’t be taken, money was taken

blue_seas

Hi, we noticed we were double charged for 5 months without explanation, so we contacted our energy supplier (Octopus) to query this. They charged close to £200 for months we already paid for. 

They assured us they were investigating this, would recalculate the charges, and we wouldn’t have to pay the £200. It still appeared on our account as being in debit, but they also were going to charge us about £18 in adjustment so we just wanted to wait for them to sort it. 

We pay by direct debit, and Sunday morning got a notification from our bank reminding us of the outgoing charge. Octopus says they respond to emails 7 days a week, but we got no response to the 3 emails we sent yesterday, and this morning we’re again assured we weren’t going to have to pay £200. 

Guess who has had the £200 taken, AND the upcoming charge tomorrow?

Really quite annoyed at this, especially as I couldn’t get a hold of them at all yesterday, we have it in writing they weren’t going to charge us and now they have. It’s a huge unexpected amount and we’ve no idea when they’ll get around to reversing it. 

Qyburn

If they took a Direct Debit without prior notification of when and how much, you can get that reversed by your bank under the Direct Debit guarantee.

PRAISETHESUN

Qyburn said:

If they took a Direct Debit without prior notification of when and how much, you can get that reversed by your bank under the Direct Debit guarantee.

Still need to get the underlying billing issue resolved with Octopus though, or else they will simply mark the bill as unpaid and then try and take the payment again.

I'd put in a formal complaint if you haven't already, and escalate to the ombudsman if/when they don't resolve the issue in the allowed timeframe.

born_again

blue_seas said:

Hi, we noticed we were double charged for 5 months without explanation, so we contacted our energy supplier (Octopus) to query this. They charged close to £200 for months we already paid for. 

They assured us they were investigating this, would recalculate the charges, and we wouldn’t have to pay the £200. It still appeared on our account as being in debit, but they also were going to charge us about £18 in adjustment so we just wanted to wait for them to sort it. 

We pay by direct debit, and Sunday morning got a notification from our bank reminding us of the outgoing charge. Octopus says they respond to emails 7 days a week, but we got no response to the 3 emails we sent yesterday, and this morning we’re again assured we weren’t going to have to pay £200. 

Guess who has had the £200 taken, AND the upcoming charge tomorrow?

Really quite annoyed at this, especially as I couldn’t get a hold of them at all yesterday, we have it in writing they weren’t going to charge us and now they have. It’s a huge unexpected amount and we’ve no idea when they’ll get around to reversing it. 

Check bank account has not got 2 DD's set up.

While Octopus will respond to emails 7 days a week, they will be working through them as they arrive. So sending 3 is not helping as that is 2 extra emails that someone has to look at & waste time on.
They will respond when they get to your email.