Another potential scam

How were they able to effect this charge?

Well done for picking this up. I wonder how many people actually check their bank and credit card statements?

In this day of pay-by-phone without detailed receipts I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot more of this going on than most people realise. The "clever" scammers are those who will take £10 from 100 people instead of £1000 from one, on the grounds that the £10 will probably not be noticed, whereas £1000 will be. I /always/ ask for paper receipts when paying by CC and check those against the monthly (paper) statement.

Have you notified your bank about this? Even if you get repaid, there might be others who are being "milked". I would hope that banks have some sort of central repository relating to possible scams where they can exchange info.

This sounds like the catalogue company that sells stuff via the glossy insert inside the Sunday papers.

If you buy anything from them you have to be very careful that you are not unwittingly signing up for a continuous debit mandate that is *really* difficult to stop.

It was covered at length by "Rip off Britain" some time ago.

This sounds similar to something that VistaPrint ran.

A "direct debit mandate" can be cancelled at any time with your bank. It's a good idea to tell the company in case there's a contract but it's not essential in order to stop the payments.

A "continuous payment authority" can be set up for a debit or credit card and is different. They /used/ to be tricky to cancel. But that changed. The Payment Services Regulations now mean a simple request to the card issuer should stop all payments. If not just sigh, keep calm, refer them to the Ombudsman's guidance and the Regulations. If that doesn't work follow the issuer's complaints procedure and get any money wrongly charged refunded. If that's not done promptly complain further and get some modest compo.

I alwyas get a receipt, and I always balance my bank accounts, every month. I refuse to use 'wave-it' payment methods. And the rsult is, that I have an up-to-date knowledge of what is happening to my account.

I recently noticed a £5 charge that I did not recognise, and so I queried it. The bank replied that it was the normal international transfer fee due when I receive pension drawdowns from my US account, but until now, they have been deducted before depositing the final sum into my bank account. Now, apparently, they are being deducted separately. But if I had not scrutinised my statement, I would never have known that.

I intend to notify my bank when I check in a few minutes whether the refund has happened yet. Any such central repository would probably fall foul of GDPR rules!

You never know, but there appears to be an exemption for "The prevention and detection of crime":

Jeff Layman laid this down on his screen :

I use Moneydashboard, which highlights any outgoing payments to any company which I have not previously marked as trustworthy, from any of my accounts.

If you named the company in question it help explain how this could happen

- there may be something nestling in their T&C's which you yourself hadn't noticed, and it would forewarn others who may already have, or are thinking of, dealing with this company

bb

My experience of this is that your common sense approach doesn't always work. The minion at the other end of the 'conversation' doesn't have to pay the several £hundreds, and probably doesn't give a damn.

I didn't say that it would always "work" in that it gets first level customer service to act instantly. I can say it has been known to "work" when you escalate to a formal complaint and the complaint handler listens to the recording in that action + £250 followed promptly.

I run my accounts with a program called Money Manager. Lots of scope for different accounts and coding spending/income. Set up standard (monthly/28 day/annual whatever) payments (income/outgoings) for current account and enter them with two clicks every month. Check account several times a week online, especially if I'm expecting an incoming payment. Balance it with the statement every month. Only one credit card now. Download the data once a month from the CC website and import the transactions into the data file. This is semi-automated, with rules to set the account/expenditure codes etc. Check against the statement at the same time. I haven't bothered with receipts for several years. I never did anything with them and I used to have half a filing cabinet full of receipts and invoices. Just a waste of space, so now I don't bother. Amazon purchases I can check on their website if I need to; sometimes they way they break out marketplace purchases mean I need to check but there's never been a problem. And other online purchases I can check through the emails. If a guarantee could be important then I'll save the invoice pdf on the PC. That's been useful twice in the last ten years, same appliance both times. And I once got a refund on a pair of shoes because I was able to printout an email. With Money Manager it takes about ten minutes to extract the data that I need to do my tax return.

Well done. :)

It can be cancelled but my local council reinstated it to get a remaining payment. Santander sided with the council's and referred to DD conditions. In short I got no compensation from the bank.

I'd be interested to know how the bank justified that given its crystal clear that you can cancel a DD at any time and only need to give a day's notice to stop a payment.

Beware! I noticed some payments had been going out of my account that I didn't recognise, so I contacted the bank and claimed under the DD guarantee. The bank, without raising a single question, immediately refunded all the payments to me, going back 3 years IIRC.

Needless to say, the DD originator contacted me to complain pretty vociferously, and of course the payments were completely legit. My only defence was that they hadn't given their full name on the DD.

With many apologies, I sent them the money back again.

So, my only experience of invoking the DD guarantee is that it works embarrassingly well!