Need help - Is this legal?

[TheRealMrsOsborne]

Back in July my sister was in the middle of changing bank accounts and asked me if she gave me the money would i pay her virgin media bill with my debit card. I agreed and she phoned them to pay, they asked to speak to me to give them my card details and confirm it was ok for them to take one payment of £23.00.

The next month they then took another payment of £23.00 from my account without my consent, this payment then took me into a negative balance and unplanned overdraft for which i was charged. I rarely use this particular account so was unaware of the situation until i received a letter from the bank.

My sister has now paid a total of £66.00 in bank charges as a result of this and i am fuming that they have taken money without my consent. The bank says there is nothing they can do as virgin media can do this because i have given them my debit card details and i need to pursue them to reimburse the nbank charges.

Can any of you lovely ladies enlighten me and explain how they can do this and have i got a hope in hell of getting them to pay the charges?

Sorry but your bank needs to do better than that. It has allowed money to be taken from your accoutn without consent. Either they view that the first payment was tantamount to a direct debit being set up (in which case they can get the money back), or else they have to show how exactly the payment was authorised.

Once it is clear that the payment was not authorised then the bank should have no reason not to reverse the charges.

Thanks for the reply, the bank are saying that in effect virgin media have set up an agreement using my debit card details and that alot of companys are now doing this as the customer doesn't have as much control over the payments i.e, you can cancel a direct debit but not a debit card payment.

I don't understand it either, in my eyes they have stolen my money

Does anyone have any knowledge of this?

If anyone gets caught on this and wants to stop payments, best thing to do is report your card lost or damaged and you will get a new card with a new number and the company cannot access it, and payments will be halted on old card

Have you spoken to Virgin about why they used your details to set up a direct debit when you had not given them permission? If you made it clear that it was a one-off then they have cocked up.

I think they have to send you a copy of the direct debit agreement (in fact I'm sure of it) whenever a new direct debit agreement is set up. Did you or your sister receive this? Did they send one? They should have sent it to you as your name and address is on the agreement as the card holder. I think they have bungled this and it is their fault...

Get onto virgin is what I would do...

They haven't set up a direct debit, what they have done is taken a debit card payment using the details i previously gave them and Lloyds are saying that they can actually do this - i feel like they they shouldn't be able to. Apparently because virgin media is a 12mthly contract they have started doing this to stop people being able to cancel direct debit payments.

I am really angry but want to be sure of my facts before i phone virgin, i take it nobody has had this happen before to them. I will just have to phone Virgin and see what they say. It has taken me about 3months to get to the bottom of what has happened!

Forgot to say thankyou all for the previous replys

If you phone them and moan, they will give you an address so you can send them the list of charges and they will refund them to you. They have done something similar to me, they set up 2 direct debits so I was paying twice but got it all back through my bank. They are normally very reasonable. Crap but reasonable.

Thanks for that Phantom, that was my plan so it's good to know they might payout