From: Mike Muppet 
Newsgroups: uk.finance uk.legal
Subject: Re: The Direct Debit Guarantee (DDG)
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2007 10:06:51 +0100

TimB wrote:
> On 1 Jun, 21:15, Mike Muppet  wrote:
>> Mark Goodge wrote:
>>> On Thu, 31 May 2007 20:14:04 GMT, J...@underthewagon.org put finger to
>>> keyboard and typed:
>>>> On Thu, 31 May 2007 21:04:33 +0100, "Gaz"  wrote:
>>>>> Fergus O'Rourke wrote:
>>>>>> When I first encountered direct debits in the 70s (as the employee of an
>>>>>> originator i.e. a collector of regular payments), it was regarded as a
>>>>>> great
>>>>>> idea with one major potential drawback.
>>>>>> That was the DDG, which we feared could be exploited by the slow paying
>>>>>> gits
>>>>>> who made our arrears department such an awful place to work in. The gits,
>>>>>> the fear went, would constantly invoke their rights to challenge any debit
>>>>>> which we were told, the DDG gave them. We were told that the bank had no
>>>>>> choice but to give them the money back - absolutely no quibble allowed -
>>>>>> and reclaim it from us. Horrors !
>>>>>> It never happened. Direct debit was an unmitigated blessing and God knows
>>>>>> how we managed without it.
>>>>> A couple of years ago i had an issue with an unresponsive company that was
>>>>> taking out debits, despite me asking them not to. The attitude of my bank
>>>>> was FOAD, 'nothing to do with us' was their line.
>>>>> Gaz
>>>> You should have instructed your bank to cancel the DD and then told
>>>> the company.  RTFI is a phrase that springs to mind.
>>> On the three occasions that I've needed to invoke the DDG, it's been
>>> no problem at all - the bank refunded me immediately (the money was
>>> back in my account by the end of the working day) and cancelled the DD
>>> with no quibble.
>>> However, the DDG doesn't give you the right to unilaterally demand a
>>> refund without cause - you have to show at least some evidence that an
>>> error has been made. In my case, that was easy - on two occasions the
>>> amount had been debited twice in a month instead of once, and on the
>>> third the amount debited was an order of magnitude higher than usual.
>>> So it was obvious that an error had been made, and the bank (rightly)
>>> accepted that without any argument. It would be harder to show that an
>>> error had been made if the amount debited was much the same as the
>>> previous month, and at around the same time. Since you can cancel a DD
>>> at any time, the fact that you'd been allowing it to run at that level
>>> previously would indicate that you'd accepted it as correct, so
>>> claiming that the money was being debited in error would be much
>>> harder to support.
>>>> Unless it's a DD against a Credit Card - and then you are right
>>>> royally stuffed AFAIUK.
>>> If it's a credit card, it isn't a DD - it's a Continuous Charge
>>> Agreement (CCA), which doesn't have any guarantee whatsoever and can't
>>> be cancelled by the cardholder even if the requesting company helps
>>> itself to as much as it wants.
>> What? I pay my CC off every month, and I can assure you the payment
>> agreement is a DD.
>>
>> Mike
> 
> I think what Mark is saying is that if you set up a CCA  - the CC
> equivalent of a DD - then that is not the same thing as a DD through
> your bank account, and it offers none of the protection you would
> expect if you were paying by DD. For example, if you choose to pay
> your electric bill every month by credit card, that's not a DD and has
> none of the benefits of the DDG.


Aha, got you - understood. But that would be pbvious, no?

Mike