Eir - Unwarranted Direct Debits

You seem to have missed the part where AIB confirmed it was Eir.

Maybe at some small unprofessional company but this is Eir we are talking about.

Out of curiosity did you send back the router?

Their small print says that they will charge you if you fail to return it.

Re the GDPR bit - you can ask for anything.

But they are only required to put the data right. You really were a customer, you gave them money. They need to keep financial records for as long as revenue wants them to.

They were unauthorised direct debits. AIB presumably just reversed them, a relatively trivial task

They're also required to only keep data for as long as it's required - if they want to keep any personal data beyond what they're legally required to, they need to have a valid reason for it

I sent a router back but their system re. tracking numbers and the carrier they use are well messed up. They didn't debit me because the minute I was done with them I cancelled their DD authority, so instead, they started sending me demands for payment. I eventually got onto someone at the courier who was able to get to the bottom of the issue and it was that when I dropped off the router, someone at that point decided to ignore the valid tracking number and label on the box and they went and created a new one. Eir's system was expecting the one they sent me, which of course never turned up on their system because of the new, unnecessary tracking number was the one used.

I managed to explain this to their man in India(?) on live chat, and on the second session he actually did manage to cancel the debt. The first time one of those guys said they would fix it, they didn't.

Probably helped that they were chasing money and didn't already have it and that I kept a record of the tracking number and took photos of the packing up of the router for return.

Any registered DD creditor can debit any SEPA account at will, all they need is the account details (unless the account owner has specifically disabled all debits, or specifically for that creditor).

There are two protections built into the DD scheme. The first is that it's not easy to become a creditor - you can't just create a new business Monday, register Tuesday, debit 50 accounts Wednesday and run off Thursday.

The second, and more important, protection is that a debtor can immediately reverse the transaction for any reason within the first 8 weeks, and if it's an unauthorised debit, it can be reversed up to 13 months after the transaction. However, as above, that puts the onus on you to monitor your accounts and recognise when an unauthorised debit takes place

Whitelisting is possible now, if one is paranoid.