If opening an internet account, you are asked for your credit card number. Can you use a debit card instead? And how does the provider know the difference?
- Tiddy.
Don't try contacting me at The Mutual address above, It's been spammed to death. Try via my perverted poetry site:
I'm on Pipex broadband. They require a credit card to open the account, but allow you to change to direct debit for monthly payments.
James
Is that innocent or sneaky? The way you say it, "allow you to change to DD", sounds like they extract a CCA from you at the outset, use it once for the signing-up fee (and to verify that it works), and would normally continue to use it for ongoing payments, but give you the option of extracting the payments by DD instead, while still keeping the CCA active but dormant, ready to leap into action should something go wrong with the DD.
Or does changing to DD in fact involve dissolving the CCA?
If you did intially agree to a continuous authority agreement, and they allowed you to switch to DD, this would constitute a cancellation of their original authority IMO. However, I would request written proof of cancellation of the original CC agreement before enabling the DD payments just to be safe!
Mark.
I dont know! I'm still on cca, but some people on a pipex forum did not have access to a credit card. They had to 'borrow' one to sign up then changed online. You can only sign up online.
I very rarely use my credit card for recurring events, in fact the only other time I did it was the caravan club. That was interesting because MBNA, for reasons known only to them, changed my number on my card renewal. The caravan club then failed to get their next annual payment, which according to how cca's appear to work they should have been able to do.
James
I've recently had a problem stoping my old ISP account and have contacted my CC company - they've asked me to fill in a form and return written evidence of what I'd done to stop the transaction - which I have done. I've yet to hear of the outcome, but they've not hinted that they can't resolve the situation when I originally spoke to them.
I'd certainly recommend using a DD instead if it's at all possible!
Dave
The credit card company can stop fraudulent transactions if they have evidence of such activity, but at the end of the day it might come down to a contractual dispute between you and the ISP (e.g. you say you have the right to stop the transaction after three payments, they say you had previously agreed to a full year's worth of transactions). If there's no hint of fraudulent activity the CC company won't be able to do anything and it'll have to go through the courts - could be up to six months, in the meantime the CC company will honour each and every request for payment until it's resolved.
IMO it's best only use continuous authority payments with large, well established companies whose reputations will be damaged if they are found guilty of requesting money without due reason, and certainly not for overseas companies, otherwise use DD or standing orders.
Mark.
Surely an authority issued to a supplier to continuously debit your credit card can be withdrawn by you at any time by simply telling the supplier (in writing) that you are withdrawing it.
If there is a dispute between you and the supplier over whether money is owed, that's a completely separate matter, and even if there is no dispute, i.e. if you agree you owe them money, they can still not help themselves to your money via your credit card once you have withdrawn the authority, unless you give them a new authority (preferably a one-off one this time). They will just have to get the money some other way.
If you can prove to the card company that you have withdrawn the supplier's CCA (by showing them a copy of the letter withdrawing the authority), then that is enough evidence for the card company that the payments have been taken without authority and they will then reverse them, instigating charge-backs to the supplier.
I see no reason why you should not be able to order the ISP to stop charging your credit card, even though you still have a contract with them. A letter to the ISP withdrawing authorisation to charge the card, copied to the credit card company should be sufficient. If any transactions take place after that you should be entitled to decline payment of them.
The fact that you have an obligation to the ISP for a certain period of time has nothing to do with this situation. You should be able to choose the payment method you use to settle your commitment to the ISP.
No, the ISP might argue that no such instruction has been received, and even if it were there was a previous agreement between you and the ISP which cannot be superceeded. The credit card company cannot make a judgement in this dispute.
Take a look at this, from the BBC:
Doesn't work that way unfortunately:
Isn't this an "unfair term"? See
Bruce
They might well try, but technology exists to counter such argument.
Well, subject to reasonable terms in the agreement, stipulating minimum duration of service period and minimum notice of cancellation, any ISP agreement will be able to be brought to an end unilaterally by the customer.
Agreed. The card company should not be asked to make a judgement, it should simply be informed that the customer has withdrawn authority and has informed the ISP too. If, after this, payments continue to be taken, the ISP and card company will be jointly liable to damages if not also criminal charges.
Naturally, the question of whether the customer in fact owes the ISP money is completely separate. One would hope that normally a customer would not try to withdraw authority in order to avoid payments which are in fact due. Unfortunately, I dare say such hope is often enough false, and it is because of this that they try to make it as difficult as possible break the loop.
Well to a certain degree, however the ISP is providing services rather than goods, and the dispute would be whether an agreement to supply services had been made or not. I don't see how that comes under the unfair terms act, the user is not actually complaining about the standard of services actually supplied.
Mark.
You mean you have to tape record your telephone conversations with them just in case they claim it was verbal?!
Well yes, but if you agreed to 1 year's service and try to cancel after 3 months you're in trouble. This might be the nature of the dispute.
No! If the CC company stop payments on the word one party and a court case then follows to prove that the other party was right, the CC company may well become liable! They have to be seen to be neutral, and follow specific arbitration mechanisms so that they can prove, in court, that they weren't being biased one way or the other. Remember the customer does not give the CC company authority to pay, the customer gives authority to the ISP to take payments. This is fundamentally different to the way banks work, from the link I provided: "Unlike direct debit it involves proof. It is not simply a case of telling the bank to stop paying."
BTW did you actually read the link?
Mark.
You could try to find an ISP that uses PayPal. PayPal is a large respected company whose business relies on not screwing customers around. In these agreements the continuous authority agreement is with PayPal, not the ISP, and this can be cancelled online at any stage by the customer. Otherwise, choose a large domestic ISP whose reputation would be damaged by such problems.
Look on
Mark.
The mind boggles. "Just in case they claim it was verbal"? First, for them to claim something like that they'd have to admit there was an "it", but for them to claim so unexpectedly, because you instructions were in fact in writing, you can hardly use tape recording to prove you had *not* given them spoken instructions.
No, I mean writing to them by ordinary first class post and getting a certificate of posting. That's usually enough to prove service of court summons, and if you want something stronger you could always go for "signed for" recorded delivery.
Indeed it might, but that's not the situation I'm addressing.
No. The CC may only make payments for which authority has been given. If the authority is withdrawn, and both the ISP and the CC are notified, then if any further funds are taken, they are taken unlawfully.
Yes, but you don't want to put too much store by what you read in the media.
Fundamentally, a CCA is simply an administrative simplification to obviate the need to give repeated individual authority for each payment. Any payment taken, can be corrected after the event by challenging the CC co to show that authority was in force for that particular payment. Having informed them that a specific continuous authority has been withdrawn, that authority will no longer be valid evidence of authority.
Way over the top there. All you need to do is tell the card company that the transactions were not authorised. IME, the card company will usually refund straight away and tell off the provider.
Mark, this can't be right. If you've told someone you don't want to do business with them anymore (provided you haven't signed a contract) and they keep taking your money anyway, you can't possibly be saying that the card company will continue to honour that. The credit card company have no obligation to honour any requests for payment, and they're much more likely to take the side of the customer. If you're not paying your bills it's not their business.
OK, now you've completely shot your credibility.
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