Insurance Company Attempted Withdraw from Bank A/C on Cancelled Policy

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I need a bit of advice....

I cancelled my health insurance policy in writing with a certain provider, and my method of payment for this policy were monthly direct debits. At the beginning of the month, I notified the health insurer that I was instructing them to cancel the policy and DD's with effect from a given date in the next month. I also instructed my bank to cancel the DD. The health insurer wrote to me to confirm that my policy would be cancelled as per my instruction.

Now the problem, I recently got a letter from this health insurer to advise me that they will be taking xxx amounts of euros from my bank account via DD next month and x amount the following month:eek: for my policy....which I find strange given my policy is cancelled. Needless to say I was quite surprised to receive this letter....and especially so.... as they had already sent me a letter clearly stating they would cancel the policy as per my instruction.

At this point, I want to clarify there were no outstanding monies owed on my health policy....everything was paid bang up to date.

When I got the letter from my older insurer, I telephoned my bank immediately just to see whether this insurer had attempted to do a DD withdrawal from my a/c at the beginning of the month. The bank confirmed that the insurance company did try to do this transaction, but my bank had declined this DD as per my instruction.

I tried to telephone the health insurer to obtain some answer's, but its been completely impossible to get through to anybody in customer services. All I got was an automated response saying send an email....or consult their website:rolleyes:. So, I did sent them an email clearly detailing my complaint and the sequence of events, but other then getting an automated confirmation of delivery (which I had requested), I've had no response from them otherwise.

Now the question.

I done everything by the books, I cancelled my policy in writing, and I also wrote to the bank to cancel the DD. Its not like there was any confusion on my instruction, as the insurance company did confirm to me in writing that the policy would be cancelled. So, was this attempt at a bank transaction to withdraw funds legal or not? In other words, did they break any laws?

Say for instance, worse case scenario was that this insurance company had managed to deduct this money from my bank a/c through DD, would this deduction from my bank account of several hundreds of euros be regarded as theft or fraud...given its a cancelled policy....and no authorisation exists for them to do any transaction on my bank account?

I know admin errors can occur....although I find it hard to believe how this would happen....but my patience is quickly wearing thin at this stage....with their non-response.

The reason I am asking is that the bank told me that the bank will refuse the DD request three times, and after the third refusal, the insurance company can somehow put in a request for a DD under a different ref number (or something like that), and that may result in a payment going through to them from my account. Needless to say, that would create alot of hassle for me, and that's in addition to the financial headache that it would cause in sorting that mess out!

Mods please change to insurance/banking if necessary but the question is more of a legal query.

Tom Young

Sorry, this is not a forum where you can seek advice. The issues above are serious and require attention to the various clauses in the contract/agreement you executed. Seek the professional advice of a solicitor.