Direct Debits and Renewals

WSO

Just a heads up to warn you that you should remove any direct debit agreements you do not intend to renew once you have paid your last payment. We recently got charged on a DD that was last used over 2 years ago!

Last month we had a nasty shock when Domestic and General took out £7.50 out of the OH's account without warning. We phoned them to query it as we have recently bought new equipment for our new house so thought that something recent had slipped our minds...

We were told that the agreement number quoted on the Direct Debit was for the renewal of a Sky digibox repair plan at our old address, well this came as a big shock because the direct debit clearly stated that it was the first payment (implying a brand new policy, not the renewel it really was - thoughts of the new tenant using our details suddenly entered our head). We finished paying for the original policy 2 years ago and were under the impression that it was a one off policy that extended cover for a period of time (3 years?) - we certainly didn't want to renew, unfortunately as we thought it had expired we didn't feel the need to update our address details either.

Anyway, we explained we didn't want the cover. We were advised to delete the DD instruction and waited for the credit to his account... were not best pleased when we couldn't remove the DD immediately (we were hopeful they were using the DD to credit the account).

You can imagine our horror when yet another £7.50 was taken from his account! :eek:

Noticing this, we contacted the bank via secure messaging to ask for a refund via the DD guarantee... the first time he got a standard message stating the reasons when you might want to claim and when he replied stating the reason they sent him the same email again! Very frustrating! Regardless, a letter arrived the next day stating that the DD was cancelled and he would have to approach the benificiary to recover payment from them...

Am I missing something here - I thought the bank would refund him directly and recover the money... isn't that how the DD guarantee should work?

Anyway, we then decided to email Domestic and General (better record of what was said) and explained to them the fact that the DD had been cancelled and that we were charged when we were expecting a credit. They told us we couldn't delete the DD because the regular payment was due (made a week after the first payment on a monthly payment plan!?). They confirmed that the policy had been cancelled and that the £15 collected would be returned to his account within 5 days.

Fortunatly for them it showed up so now we hope the matter is closed once and for all!

What we learnt the hard way:-

• To regularly review DDs and SOs, get rid of any you don't need any more
• Your bank won't necessarily chase up a botched DD, you might need to do the legwork yourself.