There may be some change here. I, or my insurers, have just had a problem with regular payment of an annual premium being rejected because the original card expiry date had passed. This seemed to take the insurers by surprise - I think they had previously relied on using a continuous authority.
In message , Rhoy the Bhoy writes
The car holder.
You seem to be dropping your consonants this evening, old chap. Twice in three minutes. I worry.
Yes I've just noticed that myself. Never mind my cleaner comes on Thursdays so she will no doubt vacuum them up for me.
Without a hint of irony, IANAL astounded uk.finance on 14 Apr 2004 by announcing:
Not always.
Without a hint of irony, "Peter Lawrence" astounded uk.finance on 14 Apr 2004 by announcing:
That's to be expected. Expired cards are not valid, closed accounts may be.
I don't recall.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of a phone contract where you agree to pay monthly line rental for at least N months. You would not be allowed to cancel before the time is up.
"IANAL" wrote
Surely a contract requires a "meeting of minds", and if you truly do not realise what you are entering into, then there cannot be a contract??
Without a hint of irony, Ronald Raygun astounded uk.finance on 16 Apr 2004 by announcing:
Although you could amend your card details. Until you do, however, the company is entitled to claim payments using the details you originally gave.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Surely you *could* cancel, but then you would simply have a liability to some sort of penalty (eg remaining payments in the period would still be owed). This penalty would not have to be paid under the terms of the contract (by CC CA), because the contract is no longer in force, but would still be a debt...?
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
What if the merchant makes sure they cannot be contacted??
That's not allowed.
I doubt it's as simple as that. You can't terminate the contract prematurely because the contract doesn't give you that right (unless the other party is in breach of it). At best, then, you could breach it, in which case they would be entitled to sue for compensation.
The compensation should put them in the same position as that in which they'd have been had you not breached it. Part of that position is the convenience of being able to take payments by CCA. Losing that convenience puts them in a worse position, and so compensation would need to be increased, which means you'd have to pay them *more than* you owe them in order to "buy yourself out" of the deal.
That would be counterproductive but, I concede, possible.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Unfortunately, that won't stop unscrupulous merchants!
Oh yes it will. If they're unscrupulous they'll get reported to the CCo, and they'll lose their merchant status like a shot.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
I would argue that *whenever* some party breaches a contract, the other party will *always* be in a "less convenient" position than they were in previously.
Anyway, how would you value the "extra inconvenience" from taking payment, (say) by cheque - rather than CCA?
Also, if the other party was to pay compensation as a direct transfer into the 1st party's bank account, wouldn't that actually be *less* inconvenient (no need for an explicit request from 1st party to the other party's CC company) -- and thus require *lower* compensation??
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Exactly.
In message , Tim writes
The merchant "should" have given an address on the agreement/invoice upon which notice can be served.
A realistic figure for the cost of the extra unplanned admin involved.
Not necessarily. Someone would need to dive in there and match up the payment to the account of the party concerned. It is this matching effort, after all, which becomes redundant if the merchant pulls their customers's money instead of sitting back passively and waiting for the customers to push it.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
I would have thought that unscrupulous merchants would be "fly-by-night" merchants, *intending* not to stay around for very long, and aiming to change name/address/contact details very frequently. In that case, they wouldn't mind being reported - by the time any real effect comes out of the report, they will have long-time flitted to another outfit/city....
In which case the risk is carried by the card company, who would be unable to produce evidence that the transactions had been authorised by the customer, as the only people capable of supplying said evidence would be the flown fly-by-nighters.
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