EE Late Payment Mortgage in Flight

SavedGuy1000

Hey All,

I need some advice here because I am so worried.  Get ready for a tale:

Way back in April I had a rolling 30 day contract with EE.  I cancelled the direct debit hoping it would stop the rolling 30 day contract it as I never used it.

30 April:

It became due and I asked them to cancel as I never used it.

So fair enough I ask them as a gesture of good will to write this off and they write about half of it.  I asked could I pay by Direct Debit they said not while the account was due so I paid them there and then.

They then couldn't see that I made payment despite their system and my bank showing the payment so they refused to setup the direct debit.

I escalated this to executive complaints as I was sure I was in the right.  And right enough executive complaints found the payment and confirmed it was an IT Error happened on their side.

I emailed elc@bt.com on 30/april who confirmed after searching that a problem was due to an IT issue at their end they found this on the 3rd of may and they found the fault and resolved the overdue account and the issue resolved they issued some compensation too.

August

At the end of july EE flagged that I needed to pay them but I only got their 'Reminder' letter dated 10/08/2024 so last saturday I received it on Thursday 16/08/2024 so I paid it on Friday 16/08/2024 and the guy on the phone confirmed my account was positive and also setup my direct debit again.

He also told me not to worry about the strike as my account was not showing in arrears.

I then wake up today to find Equifax telling me that EE recorded a strike on the 15th so basically less than 5 days after they posted the letter.

EE are now adamant that despite me asking their online chat team to re-enstate the direct debit in April which they couldn't (due to the IT issue) that its my fault the late payment occured.

They even said that I 'should' have checked if the direct debit was setup.  Why would I do this when the executive team would have seen me asking 3 times in the log and also this being the whole reason the last account became due in the first place.

So therefore they never read the chat log or if they did knowingly didnt action the overall action that needed to occur and what caused this mess.

Two Question:

My mortgage has been approved recently by halifax and I am completing on a house.  Will halifax look again and see this. Thats my only concern

Who is in the wrong here?  Me or them?

Also

EE seem to think because it's late its my fault in that I probably shouldn't have trusted their executive staff member when they said the issues were resolved.

But my argument is that they failed in their duty of care to resolve the issue and even telling me the issues were resolved!  So why would I ever doubt that.  They had the chat logs not me!

Any advice here I've sent this to the Financial Ombudsman and I am going to take legal action as this will harm my credit rating due to negligence on their part.

Ayr_Rage

1. Cancelling a payment method never cancels a contract, entirely your mistake in setting off the chain of events.

2. When setting up a DD ALWAYS check with your bank that it has been actioned. They are correct in advising this.

Mistakes happen and is this case there are mistakes on both sides.

I don't think any ombudsman takes on cases until the relevant complaints procedure with the company reaches deadlock.

Have you registered a complaint and reached that stage?

As for legal action what are you alleging?

SavedGuy1000

On the direct debit thing they didn't advise this.  They told me I had to contact them EE after they resolved the payment fault but the executive just told me everything was resolved which I take to mean he looked at the issues in the chat logs and was confirming that was the case closed.  Otherwise he should have said hey you need to setup a direct debit.

For legal action I am alleging two things:

One they failed in their duty of care to me as a customer:

Their Customer Support team told me multiple times that the payment was not made and they could not restart direct debit until the payment was made despite me asking 3 times to 3 different members of staff to start it and confirmed that I had made payment.  However upon escalation the executive team found out that IT failures on their side ment that the payment WAS made but their system didn't update.  They subsequently either accidently or negligently forgot to re-start the direct debit and then told me the case was resolved.

They never once told me that I still needed to re-setup the direct debit and I thought when they said the issues were resolve that it was all working and correct.  Why would I not trust that?

It seems the compensation they issued for the last issue that was slowly being used to resolve bills in May and June and it wasn't until july that the Direct Debit was actioned that it bounced.

They only sent me a letter on the 10th of August for a payment due on the 1st of August and thus not even 1 complete month had passed from being due only 11 working days total.  So sending it to Equifax within 15 days is a bit harsh.

And two:

That I signed up with a new contract so why did they use the old direct debit which was cancelled and not start a new one with a new number? 

Nasqueron

Legal action will be frowned upon by the courts system if you have not gone through the complaints system and ombudsman, moreover you may face a higher burden of proof than the consumer biased FOS.

mab3000

Provided the rest of your credit file is ok and it’s just the 1 missed payment EE reported, I very much doubt that Halifax would be concerned enough with this to withdraw your mortgage offer, or it be any significant  impact on your credit profile in general. 

Personally I feel the best course of action with this is to escalate the complaint to the ombudsman service to let them come to decision. I don’t think legal action will achieve what you are looking to achieve in my opinion. 

SavedGuy1000

I have raised this with the Communications Ombudsman even though it should be raised with the FOS.

EE have rectified their error but are not admitting to any fault despite aluding to it in the email response to me to the effect ... 'In future if this happens if its not the fault of ee it will go on your file'

So not confirming its their fault but clearing the action as if it was their fault.

Given I had to tell the vendor and that caused them to panic (They had to evict a tenant) I also looked like I am unable to pay a simple bill.

I was disgusted that the Chat Agents offered me 1 month xbox live to help me out -  Indeed the fact is I was also told by the rep on the phone my account was fine and nothing was being sent and then on Saturday being told it was impossible to remove the mark.

So I have no idea what to believe.