ESAT Charging all at once??

MunkyHed

Got my mother to sign up for ESAT broadband ages ago when i was still livin at home. Must be nearly a year now they've had it at home.
When we set up the account first i told them to direct debit my mothers account and gave them all the details.
We just presumed that they were charging the 50 a month or whatever it is every month as we received no bills or any form of paperwork from them.
It seems they weren't charging us all the time and they've suddenly hit us with a 600 euro bill.

This is not fair. They admit they should've been charging the account every month but didnt...

Any advice on the legalities of this matter or anyone had similar problem??

cgarvey

There are a lot of stories like this, and not just with Esat. Bottom line, is that they are entitled to. You were informed as to the cost , in the beginning, so you knew exactly how much you owed at any given time. They're entitled to take the DD amount from any time after the date they say, to the end of the DD agreement. Of course it'd be nice if they kept it regular, but they're under no obligation to.

But now to the sob-sob story bit (no offense, there are a lot of stories like yours). So either:

• You knew that it wasn't going out, and thought you'd get away with the few months free, and you were trying to pull a fast one .. tough luck.
• You knew that it wasn't being taken out, and you run a pretty tight budget, you should have followed it up, if budgeting is important to you.
• You didn't know it was being taken out all along .. then you probably have a healthy balance and 600 quid is not going to inconvenience you as much as you make out.

Bottom line .. you should have known how much money you owed... and if that lump sum payment is an issue for your particular budget/circumstances, you should have done something about it long ago.

As to whether it's fair? I'm not so sure. On the one hand you were happy enough to sign up to the service, and use it.. so therefore it's not fair that you expect ESat to not receive payment. But on the other hand, it's unfair that they expect customers to be able to fork out large sums like that on demand.

Try ringing them up and see if they'll spread it out over a preiod of time, because it was their mistake in the first place.

.cg

bigpaddy2004

MunkyHed wrote:

Got my mother to sign up for ESAT broadband ages ago when i was still livin at home. Must be nearly a year now they've had it at home.
When we set up the account first i told them to direct debit my mothers account and gave them all the details.
We just presumed that they were charging the 50 a month or whatever it is every month as we received no bills or any form of paperwork from them.
It seems they weren't charging us all the time and they've suddenly hit us with a 600 euro bill.

This is not fair. They admit they should've been charging the account every month but didnt...

Any advice on the legalities of this matter or anyone had similar problem??

Bloody same feckin thing happened to me and i got rid of em. I just hope they are always as busy.

butts

Same thing happened to me. I was told there was a problem back in May 2004 that caused a lot of direct debit mandates to be cancelled and that in order to have them renewed the customer had to make a new direct debit order. I now have the bill sent out to me every couple of months.

MunkyHed

Thanks for the replys,
Looks like we'll have to fork out alright. Just have to make sure that they never took money out of that account before. We've got them to split up the bill into each month and comparing that with the bank statements on monday. It stinks alright but i guess sh*t happens.
Cgarvey, no sob story involved, was just grasping at a chance that this might have happened to someone already, they complained and somehow ESAT dropped some or all of the charges because they F*cked up. I guess this will never be the case!