I was alarmed to see that BT had taken 2 direct debits off me today out of my bank!!!

I rang them and apparently everyone who has paper free billing, had their direct debit suspended in Nov so no payments were taken off people in Nov who have online billing. Therefore they take out the payment they were supposed to in nov, today!

I wasnt told about this, so surely this is breaching the direct debit guarantee???!!!

Mine was taken out in November and I have paper free billing.

Can't be a breach just because a call was made late.

what, 2 months late?!!!

Not so sure about that.

OP has given BT permission to take £x each month from his account, not £2x.

One of the main advantages of DD is that you are supposed to know exactly what is coming out of your account and when. If people start playing silly buggers and double debiting it could lead to unexpected overdrafts and subsequent penalty charges.

This I believe payment mistakes are covered by the Direct Debit guarantee

Can't be everyone with paperless billing - maybe just those who pay a monthly amount rather than whole bill (quarterly) direct debit. If it is true then how come we haven't heard more of this (yet?) here or in other places - certainly the media would pick up on it surely?


Sounds like they made a cock up and the OP has been "fed a line" to make him go away.


LCDMAN.......The man with no sig!

All direct debits are protected by the guarantee. This means that in the event of an error, you are entitled to an immediate refund from your bank and building society. And because you were not given 10 working days notice about any changes to the direct debit amount, you are entitled to this refund. The BT Billing Department could argue that the money is overdue and therefore it may be the case that if you were refunded the payment would have to me made anyway, otherwise resulting in the worst case scenario of disconnection.

Yes, the money definitely has to be paid at some point.

The only time there would be a problem is if BT's double billing caused the customer to go overdrawn and incur charges.

Should this happen then the DD guarantee could be invoked to get the charges reversed.

Edit to above: That is my belief based on a thorough reading of the DD guarantee, rather than a fact I have seen verified by a court case or explicit statement by a bank.

Sorry, I should have stated that in the post.

And what would be so wrong with BT actually writing to customer and advising of the incompetence?

What's the problem? You still had to pay the amount anyway.

Direct debit is a 'method' of payment - it's irrelevant that they have taken the payment late, you still owe them money.

Okay it's inconvenient, but any sensible person should be looking at their account to make sure that they're up to date with all their payments. Having a DD set up doesn't mean you can afford be ignorant about your finances.

If you were looking at your account statements, either paper or online, you should have been able to notice that the money didn't come out; you could have rang them up to complain and it could have been sorted. Okay it's inconvenient, and they should have let you know, but you should have known for yourself too.

Agreed.

I run a series of Excel spreadsheets for my various accounts and the first in the series is a list of SOs and DDs I expect to have to pay each month.

The rows in that sheet get copied to my main bank account page at the beginning of each month so I know what to expect and I then move/shade the rows as/when the payments are called/made.

I don't delete any which don't appear because they're still owed/expected - they remain there with a query notation.

Apart from being rather annoyingly self-righteous, you seem to be ignorant of the main selling point of the dd system; that it is intended to provide peope (including people who may not be financialy astute) with an easy and RELIABLE method of payment that guarantees that they know where they stand.

As such failing to take a payment one month and taking two the next is very much contrary to the aims of the DD system.

That's all very well and good, but the DD system was designed to be used by all, not just those who have an obsessive need to account for every last penny.

Some people may be barely numerate, but they still need to pay their bills.

The DD system was designed to be a safe and reliable method of payment for everyone.

We have paperless billing and it didn't happen to us.

That certainly put me in my place!

Thankfully, I am numerate so do my best to get by on a fixed income in 21st Century Britain - where those with their snouts in the publicly-funded trough continue to "tax and spend" with impunity.

Don't be offended, I'm similarly obessive .

It's just that I don't think we should expect everyone to be so well organised, especially when the whole thrust of DD advertising is that you can have complete peace of mind because you know exactly what's going on.

When you are highly numerate it's easy to forget just how hard some people have to work to handle figures.

Actually, Im just doing some filing (about 3 months worth of bill/statements etc) and came across a letter that BT sent dated 18 December explaining the problem. Forgotten I had it.

LMAO, so there were letters sent about the problem then? Now, I would query why the OP didn't receive one ... or had he, just assumed it wsa a circular and threw it away?

Check your mail guys ... check your mail ... you never know what might be in it when you open it.