Esat BT debiting my credit card without permission?

Dr Bolouswki

I was moving house in January so I went to BT to tell them I was cancelling my broadband/phone account

They told me I couldn't cancel it in advance, that I'd have to ring within 5 days of moving out.. (??)

As I was moving end of January, and my billin period was prepaid til end of February, I asked about a transfer - which they said they could do for free.

Once I moved, 3 weeks later I still had no broadband/phone in my new house, so I rang them to cancel. They told me I couldnt cancel, that a "cancellations specialist" would have to ring me to confirm the cancellation.

This happened, I confirmed I was cancelling and I thought that was that.

At the start of what would have been my next billing period (final week of febraury), they issue me with a new bill for a full service, with the legend "thank you for paying by credit card" under the payment details? I always previously paid my bill on a transactional basis, but never on direct debit and had never given permission for anything like that. I checked my credit card and no payment had been taken but I was still uneasy.

I rang them, advised that I no longer had an account with them, and they told me that everything was ok and the bill was jsut an error. When I asked about the €130 deposit I paid 16 months before, I was told that I should get it in 6 weeks. (Apparently the 6 weeks is because "refunds get issued from India")

This week I find they have debited my credit card for the full 2 months prepaid package - €137 eurons.

Calling them and compalining about the illegal debiting of my card didnt really get me anywhere - not even an aplogy for completely messing up the whole cancellation. Apparently you can't talk to a manager either - one will "call you back within 48 hours" which, surprisingly, hasn't happened.

I reported the fraudalent use of my credit card to my credit card company - who basically said my only course of action was to cancel my credit card, which I did, as i get the impression these imbeciles (Esatbt) probably won't be able to sort this out for another 2 months if their current performance is anything to go by.

Incidentally - its the 2nd time Esatbt simply started billing my credit card cos they felt like it and had the details from a previous transaction - and I went mad at them the previous time too. For the record they seem to do it simply because they want to - I've never been late on a bill payment with them or anything like that.

My question is this

What can I do? Phone calls to Esat BT seem to get me nowhere, other than "wait 6 weeks for the money we stole" or "wait 48 hours for nobody to ring you"..... Surely this is a clear cut case of credit card fraud?

Should I contact comreg? The cops?

If this should be moved to legal forums or something, please feel free to do so.

RangeR

Absolutely get on to ComReg. BT's Accounting department is atrocious. You only have to search boards for this type of thing to see how widespread it is.

Bring this further:

Write a letter of Formal Complaint [mention the words FORMAL COMPLAINT in the letter].
Send this by registered post to BT Head office. DO NOT EMAIL IT.
Wait 10 business days [2 full weeks] for BT not to respond.
Contact ComReg [RING not EMAIL] and report the issue. ComReg will then contact BT on your behalf. [Have ALL of the details about your problem to hand before you ring ComReg].

Good luck. Many have gone before you and this sort of shady business paratice has to stop.

faceman

Emer Kennedy is the head of the consumer business. Send the complaint to her. Alternatively Chris Clarke is the CEO.

Thats a crock about your deposit refund, 6 weeks is rubbish. Kick up a fuss and even flag it to Consumer Affairs. Was 6 weeks mentioned in your contract or on signing as the length of time you would have to wait before getting a refund.

I dont think there are shady practises on their part, poor systems and processes are probably to blame.

RangeR

I take back the shady comment but management in there are turning a blind eye to their poor systems and processes. It's been going on for years. No excuse not to resolve the issue.

Bring in new systems and / or fire [or re-train or move] the incompetent accounting staff.

kaizersoze

In fairness to BT, and I'm not defending them, they have sorted their CS and billing problems for the most part over the last year or so. There hasn't been too many threads here on Boards about them for a while now.

The complaint route to take is the OCDA via the National Consumer Agency.
http://www.consumerconnect.ie/eng/Working_With_You/Submit_a_Consumer_Complaint/
Comreg won't touch billing issues but it's no harm to CC them and the NCA on any emails to BT. You also need to formally complain to BT, in writing or email, so you have a record of the complaint that you can show to the NCA.

Another route to take is to get your CC company to reverse the payment.

Good luck.

Sleepy

OP, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure you could take them to the small claims court for illegally debiting your card. Had you needed to use your remaining balance of credit while their illegal transaction was on your account the card would have been rejected.

thebman

I'd ask for reference numbers from Comreg to make sure they log the complaint and so you have something to go back with.

WillieFlynn

If someone charges your CC with out premission, forget about hasseling them or the regulator.

The best thing you can do is write to your bank, saying that there are unauthorised transactions on your account. Give details of the transaction (e.g. date, ref number etc) and of when you cancled etc and photocopies or any letters etc.

The bank will refund you within a few days and it will then be up to the company to prove that they took the money correctly. I've had to do it a few times in the past. As far as I rember you have around three months to query the transaction.

You can also take pleasure in that the banks also will charge BT large fee for carrying out the chargeback (I think it is around 30 or 40 euro per reversed transaction.).

JHMEG

Comreg don't deal with broadband, so just approach them from the telephone service point of view. Mentioning broadband will only muddy the water..

dub45

I must say that I am astonished by the reaction of your credit card company.

Which cc company are you with? You have reported a fraudulent transaction to them and they respond that you should cancel your card?

Unfortunately BT (and they have proven this consistently over a long period) really have no ethics at all and seem capable of anything as they have proven in this case.

(Incidentally your case highlights one of my ongoing concerns about the use of direct debits, credit cards etc and that is the retention of banking information on company's records unknown to us and the problem of getting it removed)

I would get on to the credit card company again. Ask for a supervisor if necessary (threaten to move your account etc etc) Tell them how badly you were treated in your previous call - insist that they reverse the transaction for you - tell them that you wish to use their complaints process to make a formal complaint about how badly you were treated etc etc. Threaten Joe Duffy and God knows who else on them.

In all further contacts with BT tell them that you are going to make a written complaint to the Gardai about them. (If you accessed their accounts can you imagine what they would do to you????)

There is a data protection issue here too but in reality the dd system, credit card systems etc all favour big business. Can you imagine the direct debit or cc facility every being withdrawn from the likes of BT no matter how much they abuse it???:mad::mad:

dub45

IrishTLR wrote: »

I take back the shady comment but management in there are turning a blind eye to their poor systems and processes. It's been going on for years. No excuse not to resolve the issue.

Bring in new systems and / or fire [or re-train or move] the incompetent accounting staff.

Why should you take back the comment about something being shady?

If debiting someone's credit card without their permission (never mind the very questionable issue of having the information on file in the first place) isn't shady then nothing is.

I presume that there has to be some form of authorisatoin for a credit card to be debited on a monthly basis - the poster apparently never gave this - yet someone in BT took it on themselves to put the credit card information on the posters account for billing purposes???

And this is a so called reputable company????

faceman

I dont know what all the mention of the gardai is, there is no fraudulent activity at play here. Its a goof up on the part of the service provider.

dub45

faceman wrote: »

I dont know what all the mention of the gardai is, there is no fraudulent activity at play here. Its a goof up on the part of the service provider.

No its not - it is wilful use of a persons credit card without their permission. Taking details of a credit card number from a previous (presumably!) once off transaction and using it to debit a persons account without permission is not a goof up. And it displays BT's ongoing contempt for their customers. The sad thing is that some of their management have not long since been carted off by the gardai to answer for the misery they have put people through over the years.

faceman

dub45 wrote: »

No its not - it is wilful use of a persons credit card without their permission. Taking details of a credit card number from a previous (presumably!) once off transaction and using it to debit a persons account without permission is not a goof up. And it displays BT's ongoing contempt for their customers.

Im not defending their actions, but its not fraud. Ring the gardai if you want. People tend to get a distorted view of what fraud is.

wrote:

The sad thing is that some of their management have not long since been carted off by the gardai to answer for the misery they have put people through over the years.

Thats completely untrue. Have you evidence?

jor el

faceman wrote: »

dub45 wrote: »

The sad thing is that some of their management have not long since been carted off by the gardai to answer for the misery they have put people through over the years.

Thats completely untrue. Have you evidence?

Re-read that there face man. He said the sad truth is that the management have NOT been carted off yet.

faceman wrote: »

Im not defending their actions, but its not fraud. Ring the gardai if you want. People tend to get a distorted view of what fraud is.

They are fully aware of how broken their billing system is, and yet they do nothing about it. Worse still, when they make another error on your bill, or fcuk up the direct debit so they don't get paid, they turn around and blame the customer and threaten legal action against the customer for not paying. I've had personal experience of their direct debit screw ups in the past, and currently am being billed for a line that I canceled with them in December.

In the case of the OP, BT did not have permission to debit his card, which is fraud. They had his card number from an unrelated transaction and to use it on a different one is a serious breech of credit card rules. I'm quite surprised that the bank didn't do a chargeback. The OP should contact the financial regulator about that one and see if there's anything that can be done.

dub45

The trouble with these debit schemes is that companies can act with total impunity and they know there is no one to sanction them and it can take the poor customer (in most cases the 'poorer' customer because of their actions) ages to get their money back - just look at the nonsense of taking six weeks to get a deposit back. A deposit incidentally which BT will not give (or certainly would not up to recently) the conditions attaching to it.

Deliberately debiting someone's credit card without their permission is fraud in my view. Remember what I pointed out above to make such a debit someone had to retrieve that credit card number from a previous transaction and attach it to that account for billing purposes. No properly run company with any sense of business ethics would permit an employee to do such a thing. But then again this is BT we are dealing with:rolleyes:

It is well documented on here (just do a search) that BT operated for years with a billing system that did not work and they did absolutely nothing to fix it.

Debt collectors were set on people who did not owe them money at all. I know two cases where people paid money they did not owe just to get rid of the debt collectors.

faceman wrote: »

Thats completely untrue. Have you evidence?

On what basis do you say its completely untrue? (I am referring to the misery by the way!) Not many people have come on here and defended BT's billing system over the years!!:eek::eek:

Loads!!!

http://www.skynet.ie/~martin/blog/index.php?/archives/46-BT-Ireland.html

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054952665

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=17811

and for mindboggling incompetence:

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=303618

And you will note from the above links that its not just boards contributors that have complained about BT.

steve-o

jor el wrote: »

Re-read that there face man. He said the sad truth is that the management have NOT been carted off yet.

Before war breaks out, faceman interpreted "not long since" to mean "recently". As would many people.

faceman

jor el wrote: »

Re-read that there face man. He said the sad truth is that the management have NOT been carted off yet.

dub45 wrote: »

Deliberately debiting someone's credit card without their permission is fraud in my view. Remember what I pointed out above to make such a debit someone had to retrieve that credit card number from a previous transaction and attach it to that account for billing purposes. No properly run company with any sense of business ethics would permit an employee to do such a thing. But then again this is BT we are dealing with:rolleyes:

It is well documented on here (just do a search) that BT operated for years with a billing system that did not work and they did absolutely nothing to fix it.

Debt collectors were set on people who did not owe them money at all. I know two cases where people paid money they did not owe just to get rid of the debt collectors.

Dub45, my humble apologies, i misread your post completely and thought you said that management had been carted off!

Fraud in ireland, can be very difficult to prove and ultimately there must be evidence of conscious deliberate activity to defraud a business or individual for some form of gain.

BT seem to have very poor systems and processes that fail miserably when something goes wrong. I dont believe its fair to say that its the fault or goal of one particular individual or that the whole company is out to scam customers.

We have seen them try to make things better over recent years, albeit its not enough, but it does appear that someone wants to try make things better.

If you ask me, they need to invest heavily in their CRM and billing systems to improve things. End to end process reviews (as opposed to department proces reviews) should be carried out by independent experts in that area.

In terms of the bigger picture, BT are not the only service provider who have miserable standards and that is off greater concern. Data protection, industry regulators and consumer affairs need to have greater powers to take swift action to ensure service providers implement more robust systems and procedures to minimise issues like this. But alot of this comes down to people power, does everyone who has issues vote their feet? Does everyone complain to the appropriate bodies? Unfortunately we dont see enough of it in ireland.

As for the people who paid incorrect bills to get debt collectors off their back, thats just plain silly.

Btw im not trying to defend BT whatsoever. Im familiar with the threads here and with complaints from friends.

ardmacha

Make sure that you report them to the Data Protection Commissioner as well as Comreg.

dub45

faceman wrote: »

Dub45, my humble apologies, i misread your post completely and thought you said that management had been carted off!

................................................

As for the people who paid incorrect bills to get debt collectors off their back, thats just plain silly.

Btw im not trying to defend BT whatsoever. Im familiar with the threads here and with complaints from friends.

It can be the easier option if you are being harassed and hounded and your family is upset by the whole thing. Its easy to say that it is just plain silly when you are not in the situation.:rolleyes:

Dr Bolouswki

Thanks for all the replies - very helpful and informative

To clarify some points ref: fraud/incompotence - its seems almost WILLFUL incompotence... remember this is the second time BT have put me on some sort of direct debit off my credit card without my permission, the first time I went ballistic at them too - furthermore I rang them BEFORE this bill went through to tell them "I don't have an account with you" and also "What's all this "Thank you for paying my credit card' crap on my (non)-bill?" and yet they STILL debited me...

I ran amok on the phone with them again - checked out their terms of service and demanded a manager - suprisingly (W00t!) there was no manager "available" so I was to get a callback within 48 hours. This never happened. I rang back again and finally got through to a rep that actually seemed to give a toss, who said he would take ownership of the issue. Within 24 hours I had a callback form their cancellations team who explained that a "systems error" had resulted in their 5 requests for my line to be cancelled to be rejected.

I've been told I will have a full refund of both deposit and mis-charge within 5 days.

I will be pushing them for compensation for stealing my money and forcing me to cancel my card.

I will also be demanding written explanations from both BT and my credit card company as to why the transaction was charged in the first place from the former, and why cancelling my card was the only protection that could be afforded me from the latter.

Thanks again for all the advice on who to contact, where to register complaints etc.

dub45

Your credit card company should have a formal complaints procedure make sure and use it.

WillieFlynn

Just a comment on companies call in debt collectors for either things you have already paid or never owed in the first place.

I have found that the best way of dealing with the debt collector when this happens (I had a problem with a different phone company) is to ring them and follow up with a fax or letter.

First ask them for a full details as to why they have contacted you and think you owe the other company.
Then tell them that you have paid and that if you ever hear from them again you will take action against them.

It doesn't really matter what you say as long as they feel that they will end up in court. The data protection act is a handy one to quote, for failing to keep their records correct and up to date.

They will back off very quickly as they do not expect some one to come back agressivelly.

axer

OP: Did you specifically ask for a chargeback of the transaction?
I have done it before without any problems and they had my money refunded by midnight and it was up to the party charging the card to prove that it was an authorised charge on my card.

dub45

axer wrote: »

OP: Did you specifically ask for a chargeback of the transaction?
I have done it before without any problems and they had my money refunded by midnight and it was up to the party charging the card to prove that it was an authorised charge on my card.

Thats exactly what should have happened - the cc company's response was an absolute disgrace.

The trouble is with the debiting system is that there is no real sanction available to the customer when a company misbehaves so there is no fear factor to make a company behave properly.

There is no proper complaints procedure available within the direct debit system at all. There is no danger of the direct debit or credit card facility being withdrawn from any company no matter how they behave yet miss one direct debit and your bank charges you and the company concerned will also most like impose a fee on you which they never warned you about when you signed up.

Last year Clearwire wrongly passed a whole load of customers and ex customers names to a debt collection agency totally wrongly - did they suffer any sanction for this? Not a chance!!!!

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055095684&highlight=clearwire+debt+collectors

Dr Bolouswki

axer wrote: »

OP: Did you specifically ask for a chargeback of the transaction?
I have done it before without any problems and they had my money refunded by midnight and it was up to the party charging the card to prove that it was an authorised charge on my card.

yep i asked them for a chargeback as i had never authorised that transaction - their repsonse was i had authorised previous ones which apparently is ok by them

gah

WillieFlynn

Dr Bolouswki wrote: »

yep i asked them for a chargeback as i had never authorised that transaction - their repsonse was i had authorised previous ones which apparently is ok by them

gah

I was told before that the banks have no way of putting a block on a particular business charging a particular account. However having said that I have had no problem getting a chargeback (Ulster bank) when I was wrongly charged (I sent a copy of the note canceling the phone companies mandate).

What ever they try and say, the bank is liable if a transaction was carried out with out the customers mandate (autorisation). Leagly it doesn't matter if you previously used your card with that business or not.

vibe666

WillieFlynn wrote: »

I was told before that the banks have no way of putting a block on a particular business charging a particular account.

i think that's just for DD's. I had the same problem with BT using a DD 3 times after I had repeatedly cancelled it both with them and my bank. their 'paperless DD' system allows them to pretty much do what they like without having to worry about silly little inconveniences like 'permission'.

I ended up getting the email address of the MD of BT at the time (Bill somebody) who is no longer there and he got onto the head of customer services who took ownership of my 'issue' and totally expunged my bank details from their system, then wrote a letter to my bank apologising as they had put me overdrawn 3 times and that it was their fault not mine, etc. etc.

the best bit was, when I originally complained to BT (repeatedly) my complaints were ignored, so I contacted comreg who told me that they couldn't deal with my problem until after i had been right through BT's complaints procedure and not got a satisfactory conclusion. she had no idea what to do when i said part of my complaint was ABOUT their complaints procedure.

faceman

If you have a complaint with any company and how their paperless DD process is working (Its called Originator Plus) then complain to IPSO. www.ipso.ie

Solair

If you ring any bank / credit card issuer and say that you have a fraudulent transaction on your account they will usually cancel and re-issue your card as a matter of course. This prevents any further unauthorised charges being made against the card and protects your security.

If they haven't followed up on the unauthorised transaction ring again and ask to speak to the fraud department. Explain that the card was debited without your permission, forward on any evidence that the account was cancelled.

The CC company can force a charge back, they can also be seriously heavy weight with the vendor (phone company in this case)

dub45

Solair wrote: »

If you ring any bank / credit card issuer and say that you have a fraudulent transaction on your account they will usually cancel and re-issue your card as a matter of course. This prevents any further unauthorised charges being made against the card and protects your security.

If they haven't followed up on the unauthorised transaction ring again and ask to speak to the fraud department. Explain that the card was debited without your permission, forward on any evidence that the account was cancelled.

The CC company can force a charge back, they can also be seriously heavy weight with the vendor (phone company in this case)

Sadly that's a question of in our dreams. What exactly would seriously heavy weight mean? No matter what BT do (or any large company) they are never going to have the cc or direct debit facility withdrawn from them and that's a fact of life. I know I keep saying it on here but it is in the hope that the reality of the situation will hit a few people. The direct debit system and the credit card systems are run for the benefit of the companies and the banks not for the payer. And every day we are being pushed further and further towards a total debit system.