HP Company take an unauthorised payment

bongi69

Hi all,

Last month, I wasn't able to have money in my account for a HP loan that I have (currently unemployed), and I phoned them a few days later to see if they could retake the DD, and she said that they could take a laser payment, so I borrowed my partners card, and put the €90 payment through. I told them this was a once off, and DD should be back to normal next month.

Unfortuantely this month has been the same, and I was going to ring them next wednesday with my partners laser card again, only 3 days after the payment should have been made.

My partner logged into her account this morning, and €90 was missing from her account with no explanation. She rang AIB, and she was told that the HP company had taken the payment, literally minutes before. She told them she never authorised it, and AIB said she should ring the company.

My question is, is the company right in doing this? I told them it wasn;t my card, and that the DD should be back to normal. Surely they can't hold onto the card details in these circumstances? Now I was going to pay them using the particular card, but its the princiapl of the matter, and what recourse do I now have against them?

jimoc

What the company has done is completely wrong and you should get onto them as soon as possible to get the transaction reversed.

In my own case, I accidently cancelled all my DDs (banking online + beer = not a good mix )

Because of the archaic system the finance company and the banks use we couldn't set up another DD as the bank cant use the same reference number twice and the finance company cant accept any other reference number.

So we are currently in the situation where the finance company needs to ring me every month to get my laser number to make the payment.
After the 3rd time I asked them if they could save my laser details and just do it automatically every month and they told me that it was both illegal for them to use a card in this manner and against company policy to save any card details on their system.

Obviously the company you are paying with don't care about legalities and have saved the details, more than likely as a plain text note on your account where everyone can see it when they view your account.

old_aussie

Call the police and report the theft, make an example of them.

They will sh_it themselves when they find that they face bad publicity in a court of law.

chris85

old_aussie wrote: »

Call the police and report the theft, make an example of them.

They will sh_it themselves when they find that they face bad publicity in a court of law.

The guards have better things to be doing. The OP knows were its coming from so seriously.

give the company a chance to explain why it was taken. If you are not happy put in a formal complaint with them and they are obliged to investigate it fully. If you are unhappy with this contact the regulator. The regulator will not listen to you until a complaint has been put forward to the institution.

Its not right OP i agree but let them sort it out and take it further if you are not happy with their handling of this matter but dont waste guards times.

GerardKeating

jimoc wrote: »

What the company has done is completely wrong and you should get onto them as soon as possible to get the transaction reversed.

or they just made a mistake and change the dd to the laser card last month

jimoc wrote: »

After the 3rd time I asked them if they could save my laser details and just do it automatically every month and they told me that it was both illegal for them to use a card in this manner and against company policy to save any card details on their system.

It is not illegal to do dd's against debit or credit card, but just because they are setup to do direct debits against bank accounts, does not mean they have the setup to do the same against cards.

old_aussie wrote: »

Call the police and report the theft, make an example of them.

They will sh_it themselves when they find that they face bad publicity in a court of law.

More that likely both they and the police will just have a laugh.

sarahlulu

you should not have been able to authorise a debit from your partners card either.

jimoc

Thats the other reason that makes me think the HP company is playing fast and loose with the regulations in this regard.
Unless they made the partner come on the phone and authorise the payment they may be leaving themselves open for her to claim that the original payment request was not authorised.

She could simply ring up her bank, claim that she didn't authorise the payment and its then up to the company to prove, via audio recording of the conversation or a written confirmation that she did in fact authorise the payment.