I'd like to collect property rental via direct debit as there is a distinct advantage over standing orders as the payee is alerted as soon as the payer tries to cancel the DD but you only find out about a cancelled SO when it does not arrive.
As a private individual I can't take DD myself but an intermediary can.
SO - any using any of these intermediary services and would you recommend them please.
TIA
Bob
I think with a DD the person whose a/c is direct debited can demand the money back from their bank and the bank has to return it without question. I did once do this. Would that matter to the OP?
Maybe but I think it is generally only taken back if it was taken in error - part of what is called the DD guarantee. I feel it is a strong position than the payer arbitrarily cancelling their SO and the payee only finding out once the next due date has passed and no payment arrives.
I help to run a club with a few hundred members. We are just switching from having members make their payments to the club by cheque to using direct-debit via a company called goCardless.com . It's early days but so far it's worked very well and when I have sent them a question I have got a sensible answer from a real human, which is unusual these days. Their standard fee is 1% which is considerably cheaper than taking payments via PayPal or other debit/credit card agencies. You can chose to get an email confirming each payment or any failed payment; only two failures so far and both easily resolved.
Thanks Clive. That is the company I found online first and others from another forum have now mentioned good experiences of them so I've signed up. Fingers crossed
An organisation that I belong to (U3A with 1000+ members) has just started using goCardless. Seems to be working well so far, and I know of other U3As who have been using it for a while and are happy with it.
It might not be wise for a payer to claw back a DD but I don't think the bank can refuse. I have done it.
wait for the inevitable complaints when money is taken from dead people
tim
Um - who is going to complain? It seems to be standard practice to close accounts to withdrawals as soon as someone dies, so the attempted debit will fail. The GoCardless system seems to cope - and they have an optional procedure for re-trying. So far we've had two payments fail - one was a savings acct which it turned out would not accept a d/d, and one member had entered an incorrect account number. I assume that when one of our d/d-paying members dies, the payment will simply fail.
I understand that there are around 4200 distinct religions in the world so it may well be that a few of them think the afterlife exists and that it includes Internet access, so the recently-deceased will check their account and complain? If this happens I will be sure to report it here.
Just a followup on this I opened a GoCardless account and the customer service in answering my few queries has been excellent I then set up a dummy DD from myself to the account with two consecutive payments the first went through fine and then , I cancelled the DD with my bank account and GoCardless informed my in two separate emails that the DD was cancelled as a payer and the other alerted me to the cancellation as a payee. So everyone informed.
Just what I wanted to happen so that if my future tenant arbitrarily cancels their DD I will know about it the following business day.
NB not trying to advertise their service in any way just a happy customer. Hope it might help someone else.
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