Final bill issue
My sky services are due to be disconnected on the April 1st I logged into the my account section of my bill a few days ago to check my final bill my account states I owe 36.26 on the 11th April (what about march) however I received letter from sky staring that £29.26 is my final bill amount I rang to query this and was told to ignore all the other prices as my final bill was £16.26 I made a card payment however I have been told that there is a billing error on my account that carnt be fixed by a regular advisor and needs to be passed onto back office I have been told this for the past 5 months as my bills have been £10 more that usual it is credited back when I call to complain and I'm assured the overcharge won't happen again....it always has
Also I was told by one sky agent that the £10 is a recurring charge and it is showing on future bills dispute the fact that I shouldn't be billed at all I print screened that conversation as that was online. I've emailed the exec office again and waiting on a reply the worry is sky have my credit card details
It's all really confusing has anybody had a similar experience ? Let me know if Havnt explained anything adequately enough haha
Also I was told by one sky agent that the £10 is a recurring charge and it is showing on future bills dispute the fact that I shouldn't be billed at all I print screened that conversation as that was online. I've emailed the exec office again and waiting on a reply the worry is sky have my credit card details
It's all really confusing has anybody had a similar experience ? Let me know if Havnt explained anything adequately enough haha
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Comments
Except cancelling the direct debit isn't 'done with it', and it's a VERY bad idea to do so (and to advise others to).
They will fight and send you threatening letters and stuff, then give up.
if they feel you owe them anything then they won't "give up".
they'll pass it to a debt collection agent and it'll be marked on your credit rating.
cancelling a direct debit without acknowledge that the account has been closed is always the wrong course of action to take.
therefore if you have confirmation that the account is now closed then you have nothing to worry about.
only then can you be safe to cancel your direct debit.
Why? If you have paid your final bill, why not cancel the DD? Sky has already admitted that this £10pm is spurious and has been told several times to stop taking the money.
I know someone who was having terrible problems with their virgin service, and an advisor told her to cancel the DD, and Virgin restarted it.
I think most companies do that now.
I suggest you try asking that at Trading Standards or Citizens Advice - once everything is closed and all 'done and dusted' then by all means close the DD, but NOT until everything is finalised.
Wrong. Once a direct debit is closed, a company can open another one under a different originator number.
the Direct Debit Guarantee rules overrides this.
if you report to the bank that the payment is un-authorised then they have to refund it. it is then up to the bank to deal with it from that point onwards.
however, that is a different situation to what the OP was originally advised with regards to cancelling a DD without 100% confirmation that the account is closed.
Completely wrong, the company can (and do!) restart the DD after you've cancelled it without closing the account first - if you look back through these forums you will find MANY such examples.
You can certainly claim the money back from the bank under the DD guarantee, but it's all extra hassle and a good reason NOT to just cancel the DD without ensuring the account is closed first.
That doesn't change the fact that simply cancelling a Direct Debit is exactly the same as not paying the bill, and most companies will just turn your account details over to a debt collection agency for processing. It's a quick way to destroy your credit rating, but the one thing it will not do is cancel the contract.
This is probably where the confusion is coming from. If you just tell your bank that a Direct Debit was incorrect, they will refund it, but the company can simply continue the debit the following month.
If you explictly tell the bank to cancel the Direct Debit completely, then of course the company cannot re-open it.
My guess is that people aren't making their instructions clear to the bank, and are just disputing one payment, so all that happens is the refund, not a cancellation. Since that will never, of course, cancel the contract, the debit just kicks in again the following month.
Okay, so this will be a little long winded but this is what will happen if you place a 31 days notice with Sky, [we will base this on giving your notice on 10th March 2014] (for future reference adjust this to reflect your notice date):
So you will call Sky and they should confirm this:
31 days notice on tv would mean tv works until 10th of April then goes off on 11th April.
Assuming you had full package (of Entertainment Extra with Sports and Movies in HD) and you normally paid on 1st of each month,
Then the final bill would be £67.25 / 30 X 10 = £22.41 (which is worked out as the price of your package divided by the number of days in the month that this bill is paid in, multiplied by the number of days in that month that your TV will run for).
So the same notice date on telephone and broadband would mean that those services run until 10th April.
Then at the end of that day a cease request is sent to get the line cancelled so it will start to cancel from Friday 11th April.
However, since this is cancelled on an Openreach system Sky aren't informed that the cancel has completed until 2 weeks (10 working days) later.
This means that although the cancel should be put onto the line on 10th April, it won't actually go through until the 11th of April (the next working day) so the 14 day cease will start on the 11th of April. (Openreach won't cancel things on weekends so if you select a Friday as your last day of service then it won't start to cancel until the Monday after)
The cease completion date will be the 25th of April.
As a result of this the payment for the 1st of May will still be in progress for another month of telephone and broadband since the cease completed hasn't come through at that point yet.
Additionally any calls or PPV Movies/Sports between the 17th March and the 10th April will be taken on this bill.
Then on the next billing run for payment (or refund) on the 1st May, anything overpaid on telephone and/or broadband will be refunded back to to the cease requested date.
If the direct debit is left open then this will automatically be put back into your bank account within 45 days of the last service completing the cancellation process.
I hope this is clear.