Money debited from account without receiving bill

Abouttime

Hi

Does anyone know if a company fails to send a bill notification before debiting the money, is it legal? Vodafone have failed to notify me of my bill for the past two months, even though they have done it up to now. Please tell me it's not I've been hit with two outrageous bills and wasn't notified of either. I want out of my contract and will buy my way out to get away from them. I moved from o2 in Nov and it was the worst thing I ever did.
Thanks

athtrasna

Under the direct debit guarantee you are supposed to get 5/7 working days notice of the amount to be debited

Fred Swanson

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DMcL1971

Abouttime wrote: »

Hi

Does anyone know if a company fails to send a bill notification before debiting the money, is it legal? Vodafone have failed to notify me of my bill for the past two months, even though they have done it up to now. Please tell me it's not I've been hit with two outrageous bills and wasn't notified of either. I want out of my contract and will buy my way out to get away from them. I moved from o2 in Nov and it was the worst thing I ever did.
Thanks

A company is supposed to issue a bill at least 14 days before taking your direct debit. The problem is that it is your word against theirs. You say that they failed to notify you, but they will say that they did. They sent a paper invoice, you didn't receive it, it must have been lost in the post. They sent you an email notification, you didn't receive it, it must have been deleted as spam. You will not be able to prove that they did not notify you.

dudara

Are your invoices available through your online account? I log in every month and download mine from 3.

ScouseMouse

Notify your bank in writing you did not get the proper notice, they will return it unpaid.

I did it to Airtricity last week for 2000 euro. The bill arrived the day they took the money.

Fred Swanson

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Shakespeare's Sister

There isn't some person just randomly deciding not to send various individuals bills like.

kristian12

superscouse wrote: »

Notify your bank in writing you did not get the proper notice, they will return it unpaid.

I did it to Airtricity last week for 2000 euro. The bill arrived the day they took the money.

Under the new SEPA scheme you no longer need to put it in writing or give the bank a reason to get a dd returned. Even once they have paid it you can claim it back and they then recover it from the recipient.

Give your bank a call.

Mountjoy Mugger

Magaggie wrote: »

There isn't some person just randomly deciding not to send various individuals bills like.

There may not be.

What there are, however, are inept companies who pay scant regard to consumer legislation. Their main concern is getting in the money; end of, like.

Abouttime

I went into the bank and cancelled my direct debit. I never really check my phone bill, I get a text message telling me how much is due and when and then I make sure there is money there to meet it. Yes I can get my bill online but I rarely checked it as the amounts were always in and around the same amount. For the last two months I've had no notifications, yes I can view my bill but it's just the ways things are now you get a text or email telling you how much and if you need to see your bill you can click on the link. My last two bills have been double what they are normally and I'm suspicious that it's happened at the same time as not receiving notifications about them

My usage aside it's the direct debit thing that annoys me the most. The other day as I hadn't received my notification and had the problem last month I went in to check my bill and saw that it was due on the 23rd. On the 21st I received a text message to say my direct debit went unpaid and I was being charged €10!! It wasn't even due. So went to the bank today to cancel the dd and got onto vodafone again. This time I managed to get someone who was actually helpful. The unpaid dd was for last months bill that I already paid!! So anyway he agreed with a good bit of what I said and has changed some things and escalated other problems which should be fixed by next week.

Thanks for your replies.

Shakespeare's Sister

Mountjoy Mugger wrote: »

There may not be.

What there are, however, are inept companies who pay scant regard to consumer legislation. Their main concern is getting in the money; end of, like.

A company looking for the money they are owed? Say it isn't so! :eek:

Abouttime wrote: »

I went into the bank and cancelled my direct debit. I never really check my phone bill, I get a text message telling me how much is due and when and then I make sure there is money there to meet it. Yes I can get my bill online but I rarely checked it as the amounts were always in and around the same amount. For the last two months I've had no notifications, yes I can view my bill but it's just the ways things are now you get a text or email telling you how much and if you need to see your bill you can click on the link. My last two bills have been double what they are normally and I'm suspicious that it's happened at the same time as not receiving notifications about them

My usage aside it's the direct debit thing that annoys me the most. The other day as I hadn't received my notification and had the problem last month I went in to check my bill and saw that it was due on the 23rd. On the 21st I received a text message to say my direct debit went unpaid and I was being charged €10!! It wasn't even due. So went to the bank today to cancel the dd and got onto vodafone again. This time I managed to get someone who was actually helpful. The unpaid dd was for last months bill that I already paid!! So anyway he agreed with a good bit of what I said and has changed some things and escalated other problems which should be fixed by next week.

Thanks for your replies.

So you actually do receive bills? And you acknowledge the bills are caused by your usage, which you can see broken down on the bill?

I don't understand what your grievance is. In case you think I'm being smart, I'm not. I genuinely don't understand how you feel you're being wronged. Why do you need a notification when you can check your emails and know you will be getting a bill for the usage/rental that you have incurred throughout the previous month? I'm with Vodafone too, for broadband (not phone) and don't get any text notifications but I get the bills by email, which I check regularly. Same with any of my bills.
Go through the bill thorougly to check for any charging errors - otherwise I'm not sure what the cancellation is about.

Abouttime

Magaggie wrote: »

A company looking for the money they are owed? Say it isn't so! :eek:

So you actually do receive bills? And you acknowledge the bills are caused by your usage, which you can see broken down on the bill?

I don't understand what your grievance is. In case you think I'm being smart, I'm not. I genuinely don't understand how you feel you're being wronged. Why do you need a notification when you can check your emails and know you will be getting a bill for the usage/rental that you have incurred throughout the previous month? I'm with Vodafone too, for broadband (not phone) and don't get any text notifications but I get the bills by email, which I check regularly. Same with any of my bills.

I don't get an email with my bill in it, I haven't got any notification in the past 2 weeks. As you have just said you get an email with your vodafone bill in it, I'm not getting that. For all companies that I have a dd with I get some sort of notification that my bill for that month is ready. Email or text saying that my bill is ready and then I know and can have a look at it, Vodafone did it as well but I haven't received any of that in two months. That's my grievance with regard to that but I've a lot of grievances with them so that is one in a long list. But as I said I got a good guy today and fairly confident he has sorted it all out, usage and everything.

Shakespeare's Sister

Have you checked your spam? Presume you didn't change your email/number?

If not any of the above, this isn't a deliberate policy for the craic. Considering all the customers, people won't be picked randomly to have their notifications stopped. Might be a strange error (and I have had issues with Vodafone too - but them looking for money which I owe due to using their service and agreeing to the terms of payment, and knowing a direct debit will be taken out every month for the previous month's usage/rental... isn't one of them).
Have you checked for billing errors? That is the only way the bill would be wrong. Usage is usage.

doublej

There are very clear rules that all Originators who use the Direct Debit Scheme in Ireland must adhere to.
One fundamental protection given to customers of the Originators is the Mandatory provision of Advance Notice.
Most Direct Debits are for variable amounts and as such the Originator must provide 14 days notice of the amount that is due to be taken and the date that the DD is to be presented to the customers bank for payment.
There is another Direct Debit Scheme, Direct Debit Plus which has a shorter Advance Notice Date of 7 days.
These are obligations placed upon the Originator, their Bank and the customers bank to assure and ensure the integrity of the Scheme, which is coordinated by a subsidiary of the Irish Payments Sevices Organisation.
The provision of a written Advance Notice can be seperated from the bill or invoice but should be directly and easily identifiable to the customer by being able to see that the amount claimed to be due is actually the correct amount and in accord with the commercial agreement that the parties entered into( such as price, credit terms, discounts and allowances,etc).
Some Originators have had their wings clipped by IPSO for abusing the DD scheme by neglecting to observe the Rules.
These abuses included non provision of Advance Notice, taking amounts that were not due or taking the same amount twice, giving shorter Advance Notice than the particular Sheme Rules to which they belonged to allowed and taking the wrong amounts.
In all cases the customer had consumed a product or service but did not have an obligation to pay in the fashion that these rogue Originators wanted.
The Scheme Rules are not law but they are policed by IPSO.
Revenue and Company Law have very strict rules regarding the provision of Invoices and no company can record a sale without creating an invoice to record this sale.
In summary, you have a right to an invoice.
If the payment is being made by DD, the Originator is obliged to provide you with a written advice of the amount and date that this amount will be sent by their bank for payment to your bank.
This advance notice will be in accordance with the particular Scheme and must be either 7 or 14 days from the date of the notice.
The method used( electronic, SMS or post) to notify is up to the Originator but they have a duty to ensure that their customer can receive the Notice.

Shakespeare's Sister

DMcL1971 wrote: »

A company is supposed to issue a bill at least 14 days before taking your direct debit. The problem is that it is your word against theirs. You say that they failed to notify you, but they will say that they did. They sent a paper invoice, you didn't receive it, it must have been lost in the post. They sent you an email notification, you didn't receive it, it must have been deleted as spam. You will not be able to prove that they did not notify you.

Yep. Companies do send people bills automatically so I would investigate further rather than deciding they've randomly stopped sending bills.

foggy_lad

Magaggie wrote: »

Yep. Companies do send people bills automatically so I would investigate further rather than deciding they've randomly stopped sending bills.

I regularly got bills from Bord Gais a day or two before they would take the money from my account despite them having an obligation to give 14 days notice of the amount and date of the debit!

The main issue was they were not producing the invoices/bills a few days after the meter was read like you might expect but for whatever reason they were delaying creating the online and paper bills for 7-18 days beyond the date the bill should have been issued. obviously they had/have serious issues with their billing department.

I made complaints after each bill which were ignored and eventually complained to the commission for energy regulation who passed me back to bord gais who tried to blame the post office several times then eventully escalated my complaint promised me action would be taken but then I heard nothing more from them, I just moved to FloGas in the end.

Fred Swanson

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Shakespeare's Sister

Was the issue date the correct one on the bills?

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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Advising customers they have responsibilities rather than telling them incorrect stuff is "defending corporate giants" now?

My question would be: why do people who don't have accurate knowledge give people incorrect info and always blame the companies rather than bearing in mind there are two sides to every story, and often the company is not in the wrong at all.

Fred Swanson

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Shakespeare's Sister

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

How? The reality is it's not always the company's fault. Why deny that? Why be so keen to blame everything on the company?

Vested interest? What?
I don't work for Bord Gáis, if that's what you mean. I have worked in customer service though, and the lies that get posted here by people who have obviously never worked in customer service, can be staggering.
Telling people they may have a responsibility too is actually being helpful to them.

Fred Swanson

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Shakespeare's Sister

In the right context it is helpful for sure. In this case, my advice would be to find out first why the bills haven't been received, and to go through the bill in-depth to see if there were any errors which caused them to be so high.

SEPA is causing errors all right - one could tell oneself that it's the companies deliberately being evil and breaking the rules, but to err is to be human. Some clerk on minimum wage making a mistake is not the same thing as a top-level manager on a ludicrously high salary.
The latter I can understand criticism of, but it's always the phone-monkey and the clerk who've never even met the high-level management, that get the blame.

Onthe3rdDay

Magaggie wrote: »

How? The reality is it's not always the company's fault. Why deny that? Why be so keen to blame everything on the company?

Vested interest? What?
I don't work for Bord Gáis, if that's what you mean. I have worked in customer service though, and the lies that get posted here by people who have obviously never worked in customer service, can be staggering.
Telling people they may have a responsibility too is actually being helpful to them.

I've worked in customer service a few years ago and some of the things I heard from customers were shocking. No understanding of Billing and ideas about rights that were nuts. HOWEVER, The company I worked for (Big telecommunications) used to...

(1)Take money out of accounts at random.
(2)Set up appointments when they knew they didn't have the staff on that day to do a job. People then waited at home for someone who was never going to call.
(3) Encourage you to get customers to ring back later, rather than resolve problems.
(4)let's not even get into billings!

I could seriously write 20 more points if I had the time. There were also all types of people working in customer service. From the excellent to the terrible. One very good Customer Rep pointed out to me that She had worked in more than one of these types of companies in Ireland and the one we were at was one of the better one's customer service wise.

Yes customers can be a pain and can get it wrong but companies can as well. Anyone who comes on here complaining isn't going to get any satisfaction from companies. They're looking for a place to moan and perhaps look for some advice. Instead they get attacked, it's almost always the case on the consumer issues section of this site that stories are doubted.

I wish the OP luck with their problem. I only use PAYG for phone companies now. IMHO you're better off buying a good phone contract free around 150 and not tying yourself to a contract or DD.

Shakespeare's Sister

Onthe3rdDay wrote: »

I've worked in customer service a few years ago and some of the things I heard from customers were shocking. No understanding of Billing and ideas about rights that were nuts. HOWEVER, The company I worked for (Big telecommunications) used to...

(1)Take money out of accounts at random.
(2)Set up appointments when they knew they didn't have the staff on that day to do a job. People then waited at home for someone who was never going to call.
(3) Encourage you to get customers to ring back later, rather than resolve problems.
(4)let's not even get into billings!

I could seriously write 20 more points if I had the time. There were also all types of people working in customer service. From the excellent to the terrible. One very good Customer Rep pointed out to me that She had worked in more than one of these types of companies in Ireland and the one we were at was one of the better one's customer service wise.

Fairplay. I stand corrected. The company I worked for had a very high standard of customer service, and I realise now it wasn't representative of them all. However, while nobody wanted it, human/system error reared its head occasionally.
But thanks for the balanced post.

Anyone who comes on here complaining isn't going to get any satisfaction from companies. They're looking for a place to moan and perhaps look for some advice. Instead they get attacked, it's almost always the case on the consumer issues section of this site that stories are doubted.

I don't fully agree with this - attacking isn't on, but questioning people when there's only one side of the story being given (and when there is the possibility of customer error/misunderstanding) is reasonable in my opinion. If someone thinks something is wrong, my advice would always be to check into it rather than assuming they've been wronged. It may be that they're in the right, but it's always best to delve into it first.
There are also people who make it their mission to insist the company is always wrong, no matter what. Inaccurate info is not helpful.

Arthur Beesley

OP, did you use the service to run up the bills? If so, pay.

RangeR

doublej wrote: »

Some Originators have had their wings clipped by IPSO for abusing the DD scheme by neglecting to observe the Rules.

In discussing the Direct Debit Scheme rules with IPSO, in private channels, I'm not aware of ANY originator who have had their "wings clipped". Can you cite a source?

doublej

RangeR wrote: »

In discussing the Direct Debit Scheme rules with IPSO, in private channels, I'm not aware of ANY originator who have had their "wings clipped". Can you cite a source?

4 years ago, the company running DD's for IPSO , IRECC, Irish Retail Electronic Payments Clearing Company employed a Mr O Neill (ex AIB) to interrogate the protocols that the largest 400 Originators( in terms of transactions by volume) were using.
Following this investigation , Originators, their Banks and payees banks were notified of deviations that had been identified.
These deviations were arbitrary foreshortening of Advance Notice, exchanging the 14 day agreement as signed with the DD Plus agreement, no process for providing specific notification to a payee of date and amount to be debited and refusals by payees banks to reverse queried DD's.
The trust that is inherent in providing any Originator with access to someone's Bank account must be managed by all of the players.
The Originators Bank has very clear and detailed duties that they must insist on obtaining from their client before the Originator is permitted to use the System, including an irrevocable guarantee to operate within the Scheme Rules as they apply.

RangeR

doublej wrote: »

4 years ago, the company running DD's for IPSO , IRECC, Irish Retail Electronic Payments Clearing Company employed a Mr O Neill (ex AIB) to interrogate the protocols that the largest 400 Originators( in terms of transactions by volume) were using.
Following this investigation , Originators, their Banks and payees banks were notified of deviations that had been identified.
These deviations were arbitrary foreshortening of Advance Notice, exchanging the 14 day agreement as signed with the DD Plus agreement, no process for providing specific notification to a payee of date and amount to be debited and refusals by payees banks to reverse queried DD's.
The trust that is inherent in providing any Originator with access to someone's Bank account must be managed by all of the players.
The Originators Bank has very clear and detailed duties that they must insist on obtaining from their client before the Originator is permitted to use the System, including an irrevocable guarantee to operate within the Scheme Rules as they apply.

Very cautious not to derail too much.

Where did that text come from? That citation doesn't specify which originators where slapped. In an open and transparent process, there is absolutely no transparency from any party. Mr O'Neill is well aware that the DD Scheme is not fit for purpose, as described in the Scheme Rulebook.