Cornmarket - is this bad practice?

Hannaho

I signed up for some products from Cornmarket, but when the hard sell was over and I had someone look at the products with me, they seemed bad value. Some of the products were good value, e.g. home insurance and the Midas Service. I cancelled the educational policies and a pension top-up policy, that I thought were bad value and kept the Midas Service and my home insurance. I faxed a letter to Cornmarket, a couple of days before the direct debit for the educational policies was due, stating that I was not going to continue with the educational policies. I have a receipt for the fax, but I never got a reply from Cornmarket, and that is now two weeks ago.

However, today, I received letters from Cornmarket stating that when they presented all five policies, that the bank returned the direct debits marked 'instruction cancelled' - however, I only cancelled one policy, that was the pension one. I never cancelled the educational ones, as I presumed that once I had sent the fax stating I wasn't going to continue with them, that that was enough. Yet, they continued on to present the direct debit without my permission. Further, although the policies were all on separate mandates and came out on separate dates, they presented all the policies on the same date as the educational policies were due, 10th October, and all under the one mandate, so if I cancelled one mandate, then all the policies were cancelled - this seems quite mad and sharp practice, as it would make it very difficult for anyone to just cancel one direct debit.

Now the bank has stated that if I sign the new direct debit that Cornmarket has sent me, just for the two policies that I want to keep, then they will be able to use these two mandates to collect all the monies under one mandate. This seems like crazy stuff, apart from the fact that Cornmarket went ahead and took the money even when I had faxed them not to.

Advice and comments really welcome.

wmpdd3

If this is an indication of how things will be, maybe you are better of without corn market.

uck51js9zml2yt

A few days isnt enough to stop a Dd as it's already set up. They should have been able to refund you from Your cancellation date.