Is it legal for bank to cancel Direct debits without permission

Mingandflash1

Hi, I was wondering has this happened to any one else.

I am an irish citizen who has emigrated and I recently found out that that all of the DD's from my joint ( my wife's and mine) account had been cancelled by my branch Of Bank of Ireland, despite the account having ample funds to pay my Bank of Scotland mortgage, my Royal Sun Alliance insurance and my life assurance. I only found out after I was 3 months in arrears as I rarely checked this as I assumed having the account in funds would naturally mean the bank would abide by their obligations (what a fool I am).

Anyway I phoned BoI and was told the DD's were cancelled by a female member of staff (pass the buck) at branch level in order to make me engage with the bank. As I have been in exile for over two years now I had cancelled my an Post mail redirection service as I felt it wasn't worth it any more so their mail was being returned. I have always made sure to have funds in this critical account. I am pretty sure that the account they wish to engage me about is an account with a 5k overdraft ( which they were only too happy to give me in the rare aul times) which I keep barely above the max, occasionally it goes over when they add the interest, when I notice this I bring it back above, ever so slightly.

They told me they had tried to get in touch with me by email which perturbed me no end as I couldn't recollect getting any emails from a bank of Ireland email address. The mentioned that the last one was sent in June of this year. I checked back all the way to January and could not find any emails from a Bank of Ireland email address in my inbox or in my spam box. I checked a little deeper and eventually found two mails, one from an address <SNIP>, no mention of BoI in the address line, this mail indicated that at my convenience they would like to speak to me, no mention of cancelling DD's or any such drastic action, this mail wasn't signed by <SNIP> but by a <SNIP>. The next mail, more recent, June, came from the Orwellian sounding CCU, GCQ, again requesting that I get in touch and have a little chat, nothing about cancelling my DD's. I have to say that with pmy long standing internet and email policy I never open mail that comes from unknown or dubious sources, as neither of these mails indicated that they were from BoI they went unopened.

What I would very much like to know is, is it legal to cancel DD's from an joint account in funds in two names when there is an issue with an single person account which has nothing to do with the other account, (if you get my drift).
And if this is legally dubious do you have the number for a solicitor that would like to take a pop at the banks.

I really can't believe that with all that has gone on In banking recently it is policy to unbeknownst to the customer add them to the burgeoning pile of mortgage defaulters. Unbelievable.

Love to hear what people make of this.

emeldc

Don't know if it's legal or not but they have your attention now, don't they?

whippet

By the sounds of it, you never gave them an updated address for your account; so you were the barrier to written communication.
Your Junk mail filter, as you say, captured the emails; again not their fault.

You are using an account in more or less a constant overdraft (that is my take on what you are saying) and on more than one occasion this has gone over it's fairly hefty limit.

So the bank tried to contact you on numerous occasions via post and email and heard nothing back ... this is the start of the problem, banks tend not to be helpful / understanding to debtors who don't engage.

foggy_lad

Afaik they can cancel the debits at any time especially if you are not contactable.

Triangla

If you haven't answered any correspondence in two years, you could be dead or there may be a risk of fraudulent activity on your account.

In the terms and conditions the bank can close your account or stop all payments from it:

Section 22.4 iv)

http://www.bankofireland.com/fs/doc/wysiwyg/terms-and-conditions-pca-boi-4-790r-9-r07-12-web.pdf

ScouseMouse

Wow.

I am sure they can cancel them. Is there not a condition of overdrafts that the account must be in credit for so many months of the year? I only flicked through your post as its kinda hard to read.

If you kept it in overdraft for over a year, you have breached this.

K.Flyer

B of I do not like personal accounts staying indefinately in overdraft. You have to have it cleared down for a certain amount of days through the year and if you dont they will want to talk with you about it.
If you had given them your current address you would have known they were trying to contact you, maybe they wanted to convert the O.D. into a loan which would have worked out cheaper for you in the long run.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Try the talk to....boi forum here.

keithclancy

Best thing you can do is close the account, you will only have more problems being non resident.

You can open a non resident account with BOI/TSB etc.

Cabaal

If the account was more or less in constant overdraft then in all honesty I don't blame them, you cou;dn't be contacted so what else do you propose they do?

In all honesty it sounds like they tried all reasonable means to contact you

Oryx

My understanding was that a separate account had the overdraft, not the one they stopped the dd's on?

K.Flyer

Oryx wrote: »

My understanding was that a separate account had the overdraft, not the one they stopped the dd's on?

All the accounts that you have with the one bank with show up on your file when accessed.
As the OP was not engaging with them on one of the accounts they took an action on the other account to get his attention.

dudara

Luke Tasty Spyglass wrote: »

Try the talk to....boi forum here.

Please use the Report Post functionality to alert a moderator that the thread needs moving, rather than pointing the OP to another forum.

OP - do you want this thread to be moved to the Talk to Bank of Ireland forum?

dudara

BuffyBot

Moved to the Talk to..Bank of Ireland forum, where I'm sure their representatives will comment

seamus

Oryx wrote: »

My understanding was that a separate account had the overdraft, not the one they stopped the dd's on?

Thing is, accounts don't represent separate legal entities. The legal entity is the customer. In this case the customer is refusing to engage with the bank in regards to an outstanding overdraft, so the bank have put a hold on all outgoing payments for this customer until that situation is resolved. The fact that the accounts are separate is somewhat irrelevant.

The only reason they haven't just taken the money out of the "good" account and used it to cover the overdraft (yes, they can do that) is probably because one account is in joint names, and the other is not, so the liability isn't joint.

Bank of Ireland: Tara

Hi Mingandflash1,

As we do not have access to account information here, we would be unable to comment on your particular circumstance. If you would like us to arrange for a representative to contact you directly, please pm us your full name, branch name and your contact phone number.

Thanks
Tara