Fraudulent direct debit collection - looking for refund

Rakish Paddy

I received a bill in the past month or so for a massive amount, several multiples of what it has been any month in the past year. I immediately phoned Electric Ireland who assured me that it was an estimate, that the bill would be cancelled and re-done, and the huge amount would not be taken from my account, so I resisted my urge to immediately cancel the direct debit after seeing the inexplicable bill.

You can imagine my shock when I saw that the entire amount from the questionable bill was debited from my account in one go.

To say I'm furious would be an understatement. I want the amount refunded to me immediately, i.e. before the weekend, until this mess is sorted.


I am cancelling my direct debits for gas and electricity immediately until this is fixed, and if the refund is not immediate I will investigate any avenues open to me for reclaiming the direct debit which was. to all intents and purposes in light of my conversation with customer support, fraudulently collected from my account.

Even if it turns out that I owe that amount legitimately due to being undercharged previously, it was very wrong indeed to take the amount in one go after being assured that would not be the case, and is tantamount to theft.


I did call Electric Ireland, but apparently their system was down and they could not do anything for me.

Rakish Paddy

Rakish Paddy wrote: »

I received a bill in the past month or so for a massive amount, several multiples of what it has been any month in the past year. I immediately phoned Electric Ireland who assured me that it was an estimate, that the bill would be cancelled and re-done, and the huge amount would not be taken from my account, so I resisted my urge to immediately cancel the direct debit after seeing the inexplicable bill.

You can imagine my shock when I saw that the entire amount from the questionable bill was debited from my account in one go.

To say I'm furious would be an understatement. I want the amount refunded to me immediately, i.e. before the weekend, until this mess is sorted.


I am cancelling my direct debits for gas and electricity immediately until this is fixed, and if the refund is not immediate I will investigate any avenues open to me for reclaiming the direct debit which was. to all intents and purposes in light of my conversation with customer support, fraudulently collected from my account.

Even if it turns out that I owe that amount legitimately due to being undercharged previously, it was very wrong indeed to take the amount in one go after being assured that would not be the case, and is tantamount to theft.


I did call Electric Ireland, but apparently their system was down and they could not do anything for me.

Just to follow up on this, I have cancelled my direct debit until this is sorted, and have initiated the process with my bank to refund the direct debit amount to my account under the SEPA scheme.

baldbear

Cancelling all future gas & electricity bills isn't the way to go . contact them via all social media & the phone & request a refund.

Good luck .

Have you always submitted meter readings?

Electric Ireland: Una

Hi Rakish Paddy,

We are very sorry to read it.

We can look into this further for you if you private message us the relevant Electric Ireland account number, state that you are the account-holder and how your name appears on the account, and your address and date of birth.

We will review ASAP.

Regards,
Una

Rakish Paddy

baldbear wrote: »

Cancelling all future gas & electricity bills isn't the way to go . contact them via all social media & the phone & request a refund.

Good luck .

Have you always submitted meter readings?

I'm not cancelling all future bills - I only cancelled my existing direct debit to stop any further unauthorised amounts being taken out of my account while this mess gets sorted. I will absolutely pay whatever I genuinely owe.

My objection is having a large sum taken from my bank account in one go when I was specifically assured that would not happen. We are talking about an amount probably between five and seven times my normal bill (I forget the exact calculations I made when I first saw the dodgy-looking bill) - it's not a trivial amount. I budget for my recurring costs, and add a bit of a margin for error, but this has completely wiped me out and left me with almost nothing to live on until the end of this month.

It's the second pretty serious administrative issue I've had since switching to Electric Ireland and the last one took ages to sort out, so I'm just protecting myself and my bank account.