Fast4 dodgy Direct Debits!!!

collie_27

I keep a record of all my bill payments on a spreadsheet and file all emails notfying me of debits to my account, and when I looked back this morning it's clear that Fast4 have been moving their DD dates back a day or two every month with the result that I have made 14 'monthly' payments between 24/8/04 and 28/8/05

Anyone else been 'defrauded' in the same way?? I will be taking this further...

These are the dates of the reciepts; check the moving dates!

28/08/05
04/08/05
07/07/05
13/06/05
16/05/05
16/04/05
17/03/05
17/02/05
17/01/05
20/12/04
20/11/04
20/10/04
23/09/04
24/08/04

thommo

Yes i had the same,i noticed one month when they moved it forward by one week!! And that month they only informed me that they had taken the money,i did'nt get the e-mail to say they were about to take it.Anyway i've cancelled and gone to BB now,although the cancellation process is a pain,28 days written notice,then they send out a slip for you to sign and return.

Victor_Delta

Yes, this is most interesting as I've had just the same experience with Fast4! When I complained in June they put my next payment back a few days saying that their system actually takes DDs every 30 days ("to avoid problems with those who should pay on the 31st of the month"), and they could not understand why my problem had arisen (implying that mine was the only example of it that they had seen...!).

However, the problem has repeated itself this month with, once again, only 24 days between successive DD payments. Again they have manually put the next payment back - I wonder how long it will be before it happens again?

However, assuming they can fix the 24/30 day problem, it does raise a wider issue of principal. If a company says it charges say £16.99 "per month", is it legal for them to actually take payments every 30 days - so that over a 12 month period one actually pays £17.23 pm in reality.

If they have a problem with payments at the end of the month, surely a better and simpler system would be to take DDs on the monthly sign-up date for most customers and make it the 28th of the month for any who signed up between the 28th and 31st. I imagine this is what most other 'monthly' suppliers do, and leaves no excuse for the preposterous 30 day argument.

theloft

Victor_Delta wrote:

Yes, this is most interesting as I've had just the same experience with Fast4! When I complained in June they put my next payment back a few days saying that their system actually takes DDs every 30 days ("to avoid problems with those who should pay on the 31st of the month"), and they could not understand why my problem had arisen (implying that mine was the only example of it that they had seen...!).

However, the problem has repeated itself this month with, once again, only 24 days between successive DD payments. Again they have manually put the next payment back - I wonder how long it will be before it happens again?

However, assuming they can fix the 24/30 day problem, it does raise a wider issue of principal. If a company says it charges say £16.99 "per month", is it legal for them to actually take payments every 30 days - so that over a 12 month period one actually pays £17.23 pm in reality.

If they have a problem with payments at the end of the month, surely a better and simpler system would be to take DDs on the monthly sign-up date for most customers and make it the 28th of the month for any who signed up between the 28th and 31st. I imagine this is what most other 'monthly' suppliers do, and leaves no excuse for the preposterous 30 day argument.

Me too! When I read this thread I checked mine (only £5 per month though), and sure enough they have moved the date forward more or less each month. Can you guys let me know what the response is from Fast4, I have e-mailed them this evening. Definitely dodgy !!

Victor_Delta

I got a brief reply the other day - effectively no explanation but just once again manually moved my payment date back a few days (to the same date that they put it to [supposedly] in June).

I wonder how long it will last this time! I will certainly keep a close watch on it in future. I suppose it's rather fortunate for us that they send out the payment warning emails to customers as this can act as a trigger to make one check the payment dates.

I would certainly recommend other Fast4 users to check their bank statements etc for the same problem. For all we know, it may not just be a few customers who are affected...?

collie_27

They came back and said they have moved my next billing date back to Oct 19th, but no matter as I've cancelled the Direct Debit instruction and have switched to Bulldog.

The wording in the fast4 contract defines monthly billing as being every 30 days so they are well out of line even with that. I worked out the average in the last 6 months was an invoice every 27.3 days