This is one of the major problems with (credit) cards; the cardholder has no control over this. A credit card 'direct debit' is a complete fallacy - it simply does not exist.
Once a continuing authority has been established, it is only the organisation with whom the arrangement has been made who can cancel - not the cardholder; any amount can be deducted at any time. This is unless the cardholder can show that the other party has, for instance, reneged on the agreement, eg. has not supplied the service.
You have to be in a position to trust the organisation and that their accounting is accurate. There are some organisations that I do not even allow (even with the guarantee) direct debit access to my bank account.
A credit card continuing authority (incorrectly and misleadingly referred to as a direct debit) is something to be avoided.
My approach is that I've asked for the two transactions to be reversed. If a third appears next month I will request under the freedom of information act details of all correspondence with respect to how they have proactively investigated the reported fraud and who they have reported it to in order to catch the miscreants and as a part of their fraud reduction initiatives. The two reversals is evidence to support my claim that it should at least be investigated as a potential fraud, but I suspect they do nothing because there is no potential for them to lose any money.
I will also ask them for details of their standing instructions as to how they deal with this type of notification. If it is clear that they basically ignore it I'll pursue an enquiry through the FSA and any other suitable publicity vehicle. There is still clearly a misunderstanding about the fact that direct debits do not exist in the same way as for bank accounts.
As you point out, it's a shame that some people are desperate to demonstrate that they neither have manners or common sense - or knowledge of these things and who without a clue here seek to trash what might have been a useful and interesting thread to others.
You will need to understand the Freedom of Information Act. "The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to ask for official information from public authorities."
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So I would not have thought that the FoI Act applies to anything you are mentioning.
What you are probably referring to (at the top) is making a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act. This normally gives you access to all personal information about yourself, as a living individual. This will give you more information about your rights under the DPA:
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Regarding the copies of correspondence concerning this, you probably are entitled to see it as there may not be a third party involved. You may want to confirm this with the Information Commissioner's Office first. Hopefully the CC company will have a policy that they should be able to let you have. Otherwise the FSA may have a standard one.
Same here - now - since my previous bank once refused to reverse a incorrect direct debit. No amount of reminding them of the guarantee made any difference. I don't bank with them anymore.
Correct. Direct Debits only apply to current (bank) accounts and definitely do not apply to Credit Cards.
That may be (probably is with most CC companies) the practice, but IMHO is not one which the FOS or a court would endorse.
Once the cardholder establishes that there is a bona fide dispute as to the validity of the debit, the CC company is obliged to reverse the transaction.
It does not matter if the T&C say otherwise (mine don't, as it happens) or that the CC company may have a contractual problem with the merchant or intermediaries, its entitlement to take cash from the CC holder does not exist.
That sounds more like the Direct Debit Guarantee. It would be good if it operated thus for cards. I suppose that it depends how much proof there needs to be for the CC company to accept that there is a bona fide dispute. From posts that I have seen in the past, this acceptance does not come easily and seems to include form-filling and then going back to the merchant. This all has quite a long lead time.
With a DD, frequently a firm phone call can do the trick. Maybe it _is_ the same for CC companies (or maybe should be). It could be that people are not firm enough with them to demand the appropriate action. But as I have said elsewhere, with card payments, and especially continuing authorities, the cardholder seems to have little control over their own account.
It's the Data Protection Act you want. The Freedom of Information Act applies to government bodies, and excludes any personally identifiable information. I don't think RBS, Lloyds or Northern Rock necessarily count as government bodies anyway.
Of course it makes a difference. The OP was whinging that his bank won't stop transactions to a "fraudulent" company, when in all likelyhood the company isn't fraudulent.
He claimed that 'The "company "(I'm 99% sure) is set up simply to direct debit credit cards until they are noticed.'
Well he's got more of one than you, I'll give him that.
The company could have 1000 transactions per week on a CNP basis. They are almost certain to get a few fraudulent ones. CNP is prone to fraud by its nature, particularly for stuff like downloads where a delivery address isn't required.
When the CC companies try to make it more secure (eg Verified by VISA etc) you get people whinging that by making it more secure the CC company make it more likely that if the security is breached they'll have more of a case for arguing that it wasn't actually fraud and the cardholder did in fact make the transaction. So many people seem to like it being insecure for this reason.
Are you really that stupid? If a retailer makes a 10% profit margin on a product then they won't be bothered if 0.1% of transactions are fraudulent. It reduces their profit margin to 9.9%
I already replied to him point by point, explaining why some of his concerns are misplaced. He then replies with a one-liner which doesn't address my points. And the likes of you comes along with nothing to add except the usual "yes isn't it terrible" useless bullshit.
Good. No more useless replies to me from a waste of bandwidth.
Just to update this, I completed the online form on the FSA site as a "complaint". I received a phone call today to tell me that the FSA has nothing to do with credit cards only banks. They say I must take the ombudsmans route.
Thanks for your help. In fact - to my suprise the chap from the FSA who called me today told me that the FSA has nothing to do with credit card comopanies. Bizarre.
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> Regarding the copies of correspondence concerning this, you probably are > entitled to see it as there may not be a third party involved. You may > want to confirm this with the Information Commissioner's Office first. > > Hopefully the CC company will have a policy that they should be able to > let you have. Otherwise the FSA may have a standard one. >
I think you'll find there is no specific requirement of 2 weeks, but only some vague requirement of adequate notice. In practice it's in the vicinity of 2 weeks for many organisations, but typically it's less. My BT bill (dated 17th) just arrived this morning (20th) and says payment will be taken on or just after 31st. That's just under
2 weeks. Amex regularly sails very much closer to the wind. My last bill was dated 22nd Dec and said payment would be taken on 30th (and it was). Weather and season related postal delays meant I didn't actually receive the bill until after payment was taken. It brought me quite close to asking my bank for a refund - just to test the system - but in the end I couldn't be bothered.
What about it? He lost *some* free time dealing with it. Doesn't mean he didn't still have plenty left. Are you trying to justify stealing from the rich on the grounds that it doesn't really affect them because they have plenty more?
Very good, you're beginning to get the idea. Now substitute "victim" for "event" and let's see where that gets us. The first (most direct) victim is the cardholder because he's the first to suffer a loss (by auto-paying his bill and/or by suffering irritation and hassle) as a result of the fraudster obtaining goods with someone else's card. Next, he queries the amount with the CC co, which results in a chargeback to the merchant, who is therefore the indirect victim. QED.
I'm just going by what he said. He said they wouldn't refund. Perhaps he just meant they wouldn't refund straight away. One problem was, if you recall, that he hadn't noticed immediately, and his card bill had already paid itself by DD, so the usual route of putting the amount into "disputed" status, which would presumably have resulted in the amount being excluded from what is taken by DD, was no longer open.
It's OK, sonny, I can still do logic, and know fine well that in logic "(A AND B) is impossible" means "at least one of A or B is impossible" [strictly this isn't entirely true because "impossible" and "false" are not quite the same thing, but let's not worry about that]. I can also observe, as no doubt can you, that general conversation doesn't always adhere to the rules of logic, and the same statement can mean both A and B are impossible.
Another possibility is that the OP intended the "this" in "this isn't possible" to refer only to the last item in his list and not to the whole list, but that doesn't totally fit with the rest of his narrative.
It's not true that once a continuing authority has been established, only the merchant in question can cancel it. Only the cardholder can cancel (withdraw) the *authority*, but only the merchant can take the action of stopping their system from charging the holder's card with further instalments. To this end it is of course necessary (other than in the case of a self-expiring arrangement) for the carholder to communicate the withdrawal of his authority to the merchant.
Once the cardholder has withdrawn the authority, he is entitled to require his card company to reverse all subsequent transactions, but nothing can be done to avoid the tedium of having to do this each and every time, until his communication to the merchant eventually falls on non-deaf ears and is acted upon.
Statistics probably show that more driving tests are failed by 18-year-olds than by candidates of any other age. Statistics probably also show that more driving tests are passed by 18-year-olds than others. This leads to the absurdity that it tempts us to draw two contradictory conclusions at the same time, namely that 18-years olds are both the worst and the best drivers of all age groups. Yet both observations are easily explained by the simple fact that more 18-year-olds *sit* the test than anyone else (because they want to get their licences as early as possible).
Statistics probably show that fewer accidents involve drunk drivers than sober drivers. Does that allow us to conclude that we should all drink more when we drive? Well, no, not necessarily, it depends on what the proportion of drunk drivers overall is.
So if statistically more collisions occur at higher speeds this could just be a reflection of more cars travelling at higher speeds when a collision just happens to occur, it doesn't necessarily establish that higher speed makes collisions more likely. Consider also that lower speed collisions will tend to involve less damage, and are apt to go unreported, skewing the statistics.
That sounds bizarre. What reasons other than safety are there?
I agree, and likewise cars travelling slower than expected pose problems too.
But what is "too fast"? This isn't easy to quantify, and I'm sure you agree that it depends on road conditions, so that there are times when, be it due to poor visibility, slippery surfaces, or more people than usual milling about, driving at the legal limit would be unsafe (too fast). Equally you must accept that there are times when it is perfectly safe to exceed the legal limit. Traffic authorities set limits which are arbitrary and are designed to fit with typical conditions, not with all conditions.
Exactly, so just don't hit them. :-)
Are you happy with the local traffic authority to gamble by making some roads 30 limits and others 40?
That's true for some, but for most, it's because they have made a judgement that it is safe, and of course in a situation where the general flow of traffic is already moving (moderately) in excess of the legal limit, it undoubtedly *is* safer to fit in than to be the only one not breaking the law.
One possible explanation is that the powers that be are happy for us to drive at 35, but know that the only way to ensure that most of us stay below 35 is to make the nominal limit 30. Speedometers have historically not been easy to calibrate properly, some will over- and some will under-read a bit, so it's not easy for drivers to know whether they're just over or just under. Some car manufacturers used to deliberately skew the tolerance to over-read, to make people think they were driving faster than in fact they were, thus making it less likely they'd get caught. Nowadays speedos are more likely to be digital rather than the old induced-current spinning disc against a spring, so they ought to be accurate (modulo varying tyre circumference) but I'm not sure whether they're still designed to over-read. People who were accustomed from the old speedos to know that indicated 35 meant 30 actual, may still think indicated 35 is OK.
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