I obviously can't comment without full & relevant details of the particular cases. The news snippets you have linked to haven't stated exactly what lengths the consumer has gone to, to confirm withdrawal of authority - eg letter sent by recorded delivery to retailer, with proof of signing then passed to the CC company?
"markp" wrote
Are the people involved actually doing this??
"markp" wrote
I can't see it myself, but if so - then there would be no problem with the CC company stopping payments, would there - when there is no applicable law involved??!
In principle yes, but if the consumer did in fact agree to keep authority active for a minimum period, then he would become liable for any additional collection costs the trader would incur as a result of his being "difficult".
Not quite. House sale agreements do typically include provisions that interest will be added in the event of late payment, but only within reasonable limits. Anything more than a month might entitle the seller to pull out of the deal and sue for damages.
Don't know, but you would expect these consumer programmes to advise people to do that if it really fixes the problem, and to have stated that they had been tried if indeed it had failed.
Again, why are they not being advised to do this by these consumer programmes? Seems straight forward to me to sort the problem out easily if it really works. Instead there are dispute procedures which could take up to six months to sort out. This is obviously not as easy as you say!
Other than the possibility of being sued by the retailer for *not* providing payments, in which case they are taking the least risky option by continuing to make payments and leave the legitimacy argument to be between the retailer and the consumer.
Just for your information, I have just contacted my credit card company (NatWest MasterCard) and asked them exactly what happens during a continuous authority dispute. The answer is that there is a mark on the account when you make the compaint, but payment requests *continue to be honoured* until the dispute is settled by their dispute process. If the payments were indeed in error then the interest and payments are re-imbursed accordingly from the marked date.
If you want to confirm this, phone 01702 354040, thats the NatWest MasterCard helpline.
Just for your information, I have just contacted my credit card company (NatWest MasterCard) and asked them exactly what happens during a continuous authority dispute. The answer is that there is a mark on the account when you make the compaint, but payment requests *continue to be honoured* until the dispute is settled by their dispute process. If the payments were indeed in error then the interest and payments are re-imbursed accordingly from the marked date.
If you want to confirm this, phone 01702 354040, thats the NatWest MasterCard helpline.
I wouldn't expect it to be any different. What you're saying appears to say that they have no mechanism for rejecting invalid payment requests at all, instead only for correcting them after the fact, and that CCA payment requests are likely always to be processed the same as one-off requests, i.e. in Style A and not B.
That being the case, the onus is always on the card company, jointly with the retailer, to prove that authority was in fact in force, before they are entitled to require the customer to settle the disputed part of any CC bill.
Evidence of an authority having been in place previously is not enough to prove that it has not subsequently been withdrawn, and a customer's mere statement that it as been withdrawn *must* be enough to determine the outcome of the card company's internal investigation, provided the statement is accompanied by evidence that the retailer was duly informed of withdrawal of authority.
In any case, the outcome of any card company's internal procedure is not binding, and there is always recourse to the courts.
Well you've changed your tune! From a previous post of yours to me:
"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".
Now you're saying the CC company are actually allowing these payments to be taken unlawfully (your words not mine), knowing them to be so because they and the ISP have been advised in writing, which to my mind means they can be sued. Which is it exactly??
I've never had bother with them either, but the stories I've heard are pretty bad. Paypal isn't a bank, and isn't regulated by the FSA. It can do any number of fiddly things with your money.
I stand by this, subject to the interpretation of "make payments" as "make payments for which they can expect to be reimbursed by the cardholder", and subject to toning down "unlawfully" a bit. After all, anything the CC co does is preliminary. If they let a disputed balance build up, it doesn't begin to be skin off their customer's nose until they actually expect him to pay it off. No way can they force a customer to pay any part of a balance unless they can produce incontrovertible evidence that the *specific* transactions in question have been authorised by the customer.
The CC company can do what they like in terms of giving funds away to rogue retailers, that's a chance they take. The rub comes when they try to get the money off the cardholder. If they cannot produce evidence of authority, no court will force the customer to pay up.
The customer doesn't actually need to sue the CCC, the CCC would have to sue the customer for any money they've advanced to the retailer.
Yes, 'tone down' is right! In fact, can you tell me why there is even a dispute process at all, given that according to your posts all that would be needed is a letter from the customer proving that a letter had been sent to the retailer withdrawing authority? Why do consumer groups warn of such problems that could take "up to six months" (and this was a BBC consumer website quoting a Visa Europe representative) to sort out? Why do consumer groups not advise simply to write a letter or two as you suggest?
Let's face it, this is not as clear cut as all that! There are other reasons why the CC company continue to pay out, one of which I believe is that there could well be an *ongoing* agreement between the consumer and retailer that payments (plural) were to be made by continuous authority agreement, and until the CC company is absolutely sure that they should stop paying they won't. As I've stated previously, this can only come at the end of a proper arbitration process, and until that is sorted the CC company will honour payments.
The CCA 1974 act really needs updating IMO to put more power in the hands of the consumer and actually do as you suggest, i.e. authority to pay can be withdrawn at any time unilaterally by the card holder, and the CC company should act on this instruction immediately. Continuous authority agreements should be just as you say, continuously renewable authority that can be stopped just by the consumer saying STOP. This does not seem to be the case at the moment, otherwise the CC companies would actually stop, and they clearly don't. I don't know what will happen if a consumer refuses to pay their end, when I spoke to the CC company they said that in the event that the dispute is settled in the consumer's favour, the payments *plus the interest* will be credited back, this implies that the consumer does not actually have to pay until it's sorted out, but it does suggest the transaction will be treated otherwise as normal by acruing interest (with possible implications for minimum payments and credit limits etc.)
I don't see why a credit card company would be unable to reject any payment request. If I try to use my card for a one-off transaction, and during the authorisation process the card company is unhappy about some aspect of the transaction, they have no hesitation whatsoever in declining authorisation.
If I'm having problems with a CCA, and ask the card company not to authorise any further transaction from 'XYZ Company', why can they not do that?
I've had occasion to dispute transactions with two card issuers, HSBC and Nationwide. In both cases, whenever I've questioned a transaction their procedure has been to immediately remove the transaction from my account. They then initiate an investigation procedure and say that if the transaction were subsequently shown to be valid that I would be informed. I each case, I never heard anything more about it.
I'm happy with it being handled that way. I wouldn't be so happy if I was expected to pay for a transaction that I had not authorised and then have it refunded *after* the investigation.
I've had problems with PayPal, and they can be very difficult to deal with. The problem arose when I accessed my account while travelling overseas. PayPal noticed this and immediately froze my account. The problem then is that if you're not able to log into your account it becomes very difficult to communicate with them to resolve the issue.
PayPal asked me to fax them copies of my registered bank and credit card statement to verify my home address, which I did, but I was never able to get the account released and just abandoned it, fortunately with no money in it. If the account had had a significant amount of money in, as has happened to some people, I would have been furious. I can see why people are motivated to set up web sites like those that attack PayPal.
Presumably because it would be "too complicated" for them to maintain a merchant blacklist per cardholder. Mind you, with technology getting cheaper I dare say it's feasible, but new procedures might be a bit of an upheaval to introduce, and meanwhile they have existing procedures to deal with queries and I suppose they just take the view that they're adequate for dealing with the problem.
They always have the option of dealing with persistantly dodgy merchants by blacklisting them completely, rather than on a per-customer basis.
I think the point of these programmes is really to warn of the bad eggs rather than of the system itself, because frankly I don't think the legal position is as you think it is. The problems are partly due to unscrupulous merchants pretending they didn't receive STOP instructions from the customer, and of course to a large extent due to customer ignorance that their instructions must in the first instance be addressed to the merchant, not the card company.
No, I think it's because the system is fundamentally based on trust, and the card company will initially always take the merchant's word for it that they have authority. After all, authority is not as a rule demonstrated with each transaction, but is only required in the event of a query.
If problems can take "up to six months" to sort out, that's pretty bad of course, but you know what these programmes are like, they'll pick the most outrageous numbers they can lay their hands on. The time taken will basically be a function of the volume of complaints coming in, and the size of the complaints department, and hence the rate at which they can handle complaints, and hence the queue lengths. After all, it can take similar lengths of time for straightforward cases to be heard in the courts.
Nope - *I* would certainly not expect full details of anything from todays media - usually more like just half a story!
"markp" wrote
Er - because that doesn't make good TV!
"markp" wrote
Are you saying that option (1), continuing payments, is "safer" because it means that the CC company won't get sued by the retailer? Whereas in option (2), stopping payments, the retailer will not sue??
Well - what about the *consumer* sueing the CC company if option (1) is followed? Are you saying that the CC company thinks it much less likely that a "wronged" consumer will sue, compared to a "wronged" retailer? Or that it is more likely that the retailer's case is stronger than the consumer's?
Hmmm - for the minute, let's ignore who can (and who cannot) provide authority for payments and concentrate on the simple plain facts. The payment either *should*, or *should not* be made (this may not bne known at the time of the request, but ought to be known after an investigation) - there is no middle ground, it will not be "part"-made.
The retailer says "should be", the consumer says "should not be". Whichever is decided at the time of the request, it is *not* impartial and must, necessarily, involve taking one or the other's side in the matter.
You are saying that the CC company should side with the retailer. This is not impartial. Why do you believe that this particular side should be taken (until the investigation is concluded)??
No, only that they want to be seen as neutral, i.e. not take sides, until a proper dispute process has been followed, and in the meantime they carry on as normal. Normal in this case seems to be to take the word of the retailer that authority has been given to remove funds and to leave the arguments about the legitimacy to the two parties. I don't think this is right personally, but this seems to be what happens.
No, no! They act 'as normal' until their dispute process has been followed. It seems that 'normal' behaviour in this context is to trust the retailer to have authority until proven otherwise, and it also seems that even a letter proving that authority has been withdrawn is insufficient to stop the payments. I don't think this is right or *should be* done as you put it, in fact I think it is wrong, the consumer should be able to stop payments simply by withdrawing authority. I'm just trying to articulate the CC company's thought patterns and explain what really happens.
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