Bank removed Direct Debit without warning if you dont use it

Crater

I have had a couple of direct debits set up for minimum payment for my credit cards, as a "backstop" if I miss something.

I normally pay manually. Now I find (and my partner finds) that our bank has just closed his without warning, because they had not been used for a while (I think it's meant to be 13 months, though we had them for longer than that without being closed.)

One of the cards courteously let him know - the other one didn't! We only found out by accident.

The bank never said a word. So I asked them, and the reply was "Well, yes, we do that. You can't request us not to."

There were no glitches or mis-use involved, they just do this. 13 months sounds like a system, but there are some things that may get paid annually but not within a 13-month deadline.

Is anyone else having problems with this?  (I thought like many people that your bank could not shut down your direct debits unless you had done something wrong, and they were supposed to tell you.)

comeandgo

I think it’s standard procedure.  One of the companies I worked for could not re activate a customer direct debit if it had not been used in the past 12 months.

flo22

mandate retention period (in months)  is not determined by your bank but by the Service User themselves.   
Let the payment be by Direct Debit instead of paying manually

PRAISETHESUN

It's not a "glitch" or a "problem" with the system but rather an intentional design - 13 months is the standard rule for dormant DDs. If you let your DDs pay out each month automatically instead of paying off your cards manually then they will always stay active and you won't have this issue occur again.

km1500

that's not the point it's just the fact that the bank do it without warning - they don't warn you when you set up the direct debit and they don't warn you 13 months later.

CliveOfIndia

km1500 said:

that's not the point it's just the fact that the bank do it without warning - they don't warn you when you set up the direct debit and they don't warn you 13 months later.

That's a fair point, I guess.

But it has always been like this, across all banks - kind of an industry standard, I guess you might say.  The 13-month rule is supposed to account for the fact that many DD's are only taken once a year.

During Covid, the dormancy period was increased to 24 months.  Some banks have retained this increased dormancy period, but a lot have reverted to the original 13-month processing.

Brie

I think for some of us that have absolutely ancient accounts this may not have been in the original T&Cs - assuming we actually read them.  And given that banks regularly send updated T&Cs they may have changed any time since.  I would have thought that this would be grounds to lodge a complaint if the change had not been highlighted at the time the change was made.  But this is me making assumptions.  I would certainly lodge a complaint if I had to pay a fee for a missed DD.  It might not work but certainly would be worth my time to compose an email.

Crater

Thank you to everyone for your comments. Sorry about belatedness, I thought I had replied to this but can't find it!

Meanwhile I thought I had set my cards up to take the Minimum Payment to trigger the DD. One did (Nat West), hooray!. The other one totally ignored the DD (as I had paid most of the account already), as a result of which I was a few quid underpaid and have been charged quite a lot of interest. No names right now, but I will be calling them. <red in face> Yes, I know they are entitled to. (This is the same card that lost my payment one time and told me to pay it all again while they spent three months finding out what  had gone wrong. I politely declined, which was easier then than it is now.)