Fraudulent Direct debits for a person with illness not taking care of their accounts for a long peri

Femmefatale123

Hi. 
My Dad became ill & unbeknown to us (his daughters & wife) he stopped taking care of his finances. During this time 2 direct debits were set up for network providers. They were paid for approximately 1 year. 
Since finding out my Dad passed away & we had power of attorney to help deal with his accounts etc. I tried sorting these just before he passed bug didn't get anywhere with either companies. Vodafone & Talktalk. I've registered his death which was back in May 2024. With both companies & informed them of the problem. They were both supposed to have passed the details to their fraud department & said they would get back to me. Neither have & each time I try to contact them since I am sent on a roundabout of getting nowhere. Can I claim through my bank. Or is there anything else I can do to get the monies back. It's over £200 in total. Alot for any pensioner to lose. The bank account is a joint account with Mam & I am now named on that account. With NatWest
 Hopefully this will make dealing with anything in the future much easier. 
Please any advise. Direct links to help contact the right person would be great

eskbanker

Do you believe these were set up fraudulently in some way?  Or that he was somehow coerced into buying something he didn't need?  In other words, on what basis are you expecting money to be recovered?

There is a direct debit guarantee that might allow the payments to be disputed with the bank, but if the network providers can provide evidence that the DDs were correctly set up with them then any refunds would be reversed, so it remains important to get to the bottom of what actually happened....