Published Fri, 30 May 2008 14:58:00 +0000
We currently accept payment for both goods and ongoing services by
credit or debit card.

Now that we handle Direct Debits, and now that the UK banking industry
have just launched Faster Payments we are planning to phase out credit
and debit cards acceptance at some time.

We have stopped offering card payment as an option on new business
accounts for a long time now. We no longer offer it as a payment method
for new personal accounts with us. We are contacting customers paying
existing ongoing services by card as their card expires or before.

We have not set a date for when we will stop accepting cards as yet,
and we are keen to gauge customer reaction to this proposal.

Customers paying for ongoing services can use Direct Debit which is as
convenient but offers more controls and benefits to you, the customer,
than continuous card payments.

Customers buying goods and needing to make a one-off payment first can
now use the new Faster Payments system to transfer money to our bank.
We can check this before sending goods. This allows order and shipping
same day. We plan to automate collecting Faster Payment details from
our bank to make this simpler.

Why?

a) Fraud - cards allow more possibility of fraud and we have had issues
with this.
b) Cost - card processing is expensive for our type of industry and we
don't want to have to pass this on by way of a card payment fee.
c) Possibility of fines - even though UK contract law does not allow
for fines, our merchant services provider have advised that we risk
being fined as much as £300,000 if our systems do not fully comply
with a set of specific, and not best thought out, rules, even if there
is no security breach or losses of money or data. We take security very
seriously and always have done, but we are not prepared to cover this
level of risk.

We welcome any comments on this matter. I am happy to discuss details
on usenet news and irc with any customers as well.

--
Adrian Kennard
Director.
See http://aaisp.blogspot.com/2008/05/card-payments.html

On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:12:03 UTC, noreply@blogger.com (AAISP Status) 
wrote:

> Customers paying for ongoing services can use Direct Debit which is as
> convenient but offers more controls and benefits to you, the customer,
> than continuous card payments.

And one switches how?

-- 
Regards
Dave Saville

NB Remove nospam. for good email address

Dave Saville wrote:
> On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:12:03 UTC, noreply@blogger.com (AAISP Status) 
> wrote:
> 
>> Customers paying for ongoing services can use Direct Debit which is as
>> convenient but offers more controls and benefits to you, the customer,
>> than continuous card payments.
> 
> And one switches how?

On the accounts control fill in on line, or call accounts.

AAISP Status  wrote:
>We have not set a date for when we will stop accepting cards as yet,
>and we are keen to gauge customer reaction to this proposal.

Well, I'll continue to use credit card payment as long as I can
because that way I get interest free credit on the amount, which
direct debit obviously doesn't provide.

The traditional way to nudge people over to direct debit is to
give a discount for paying that way :-)

-- PMM

Peter Maydell wrote:
> AAISP Status  wrote:
>> We have not set a date for when we will stop accepting cards as yet,
>> and we are keen to gauge customer reaction to this proposal.
> 
> Well, I'll continue to use credit card payment as long as I can
> because that way I get interest free credit on the amount, which
> direct debit obviously doesn't provide.
> 
> The traditional way to nudge people over to direct debit is to
> give a discount for paying that way :-)

We may effectively do that by adding a processing fee for cards...

On Fri, 30 May 2008, AAISP Status wrote:

AS> Published Fri, 30 May 2008 14:58:00 +0000
AS> We currently accept payment for both goods and ongoing services by
AS> credit or debit card.
AS> 
AS> Now that we handle Direct Debits, and now that the UK banking industry
AS> have just launched Faster Payments we are planning to phase out credit
AS> and debit cards acceptance at some time.
AS> 
AS> We welcome any comments on this matter. I am happy to discuss details
AS> on usenet news and irc with any customers as well.
AS> 

I don't do direct debits.


-- 
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
  However, unless this a very old message, a "tuna" will swim right
  through. )

On Sat, 31 May 2008, Alan Clifford wrote:

AC> On Fri, 30 May 2008, AAISP Status wrote:
AC> 
AC> AS> Published Fri, 30 May 2008 14:58:00 +0000
AC> AS> We currently accept payment for both goods and ongoing services by
AC> AS> credit or debit card.
AC> AS> 
AC> AS> Now that we handle Direct Debits, and now that the UK banking industry
AC> AS> have just launched Faster Payments we are planning to phase out credit
AC> AS> and debit cards acceptance at some time.
AC> AS> 
AC> AS> We welcome any comments on this matter. I am happy to discuss details
AC> AS> on usenet news and irc with any customers as well.
AC> AS> 
AC> 
AC> I don't do direct debits.
AC> 

I can set up a standing order.  I do not see why I need to allow you to 
access my bank account in any way.


-- 
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
  However, unless this a very old message, a "tuna" will swim right
  through. )

In message , 
Alan Clifford  writes
>I don't do direct debits.

Me neither, but so long as standing order remains no more expensive that 
DD I'm happy enough.  Any provider who penalizes me for not paying by DD 
tends to lose my business at the earliest opportunity.

The only problem I can foresee is where A&A start to make additional 
charges for usage by reducing the over usage allowance or similar.  At 
that point, standing orders cease to be efficient since it assumes a 
constant amount.  If this was to occur I would expect to use a Credit 
Card and I would not expect to be charged for the privilege.  I'm no fan 
of the Ryanair Modus operandi.

Presumably A&A's merchant services provider wants A&A to comply with the 
PCI-DSS.  Out of interest, what aspect of the PCI-DSS don't you like?

Cheers,
-- 
Mark A. R. Knight                                finger: spam@knigma.org
Tel: +44 7973 410732                             http://www.knigma.org/
                                                  s/spam/markk/g

On Sat, 31 May 2008 13:00:40 +0100, Alan Clifford wrote:

> I don't do direct debits.

Your choice. Pay the CC surcharge should A&A bring one in. Remember that 
the CC company gets around 3 or 4% of each transactions value. I wonder 
what the cost/transaction for a DD is?

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

Adrian Kennard wrote:
> Dave Saville wrote:
>> On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:12:03 UTC, noreply@blogger.com (AAISP Status) 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Customers paying for ongoing services can use Direct Debit which is as
>>> convenient but offers more controls and benefits to you, the customer,
>>> than continuous card payments.
>>
>> And one switches how?
> 
> On the accounts control fill in on line, or call accounts.

Oh it had somehow escaped my notice you did direct debit now. I much 
prefer that to the uncertainties of credit card payment so I've signed 
up for that. Do I need to cancel my credit card payment somehow too?

John Burton wrote:
> Adrian Kennard wrote:
>> Dave Saville wrote:
>>> On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:12:03 UTC, noreply@blogger.com (AAISP Status) 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Customers paying for ongoing services can use Direct Debit which is as
>>>> convenient but offers more controls and benefits to you, the customer,
>>>> than continuous card payments.
>>>
>>> And one switches how?
>>
>> On the accounts control fill in on line, or call accounts.
> 
> Oh it had somehow escaped my notice you did direct debit now. I much 
> prefer that to the uncertainties of credit card payment so I've signed 
> up for that. Do I need to cancel my credit card payment somehow too?

The direct debit takes priority on our system, but you can call or email 
accounts and ask them to remove the card.

Mark Knight wrote:
> In message , 
> Alan Clifford  writes
>> I don't do direct debits.
> 
> Me neither, but so long as standing order remains no more expensive that 
> DD I'm happy enough.  Any provider who penalizes me for not paying by DD 
> tends to lose my business at the earliest opportunity.

We have always allowed standing order/BACS, and now allow faster 
payments as well. We have no plans to make any price difference between 
those and direct debit.

> The only problem I can foresee is where A&A start to make additional 
> charges for usage by reducing the over usage allowance or similar.  At 
> that point, standing orders cease to be efficient since it assumes a 
> constant amount.  If this was to occur I would expect to use a Credit 
> Card and I would not expect to be charged for the privilege.  I'm no fan 
> of the Ryanair Modus operandi.
> 
> Presumably A&A's merchant services provider wants A&A to comply with the 
> PCI-DSS.  Out of interest, what aspect of the PCI-DSS don't you like?

The possible £300,000 "fine" for no compliance even if no losses or 
breach. It would be easy to be non compliant in some aspect without that 
actually being a security issue.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
> On Sat, 31 May 2008 13:00:40 +0100, Alan Clifford wrote:
> 
>> I don't do direct debits.
> 
> Your choice. Pay the CC surcharge should A&A bring one in. Remember that 
> the CC company gets around 3 or 4% of each transactions value. I wonder 
> what the cost/transaction for a DD is?

For us, DD is cheap, simple and reliable.

It also has good points for the customer too, like immediate claw back 
for a number of reasons.

On Sat, 31 May 2008 21:43:04 +0100, Adrian Kennard  wrote:
>  Dave Liquorice wrote:
> > On Sat, 31 May 2008 13:00:40 +0100, Alan Clifford wrote:
> > 
> >> I don't do direct debits.
> > 
> > Your choice. Pay the CC surcharge should A&A bring one in. Remember that 
> > the CC company gets around 3 or 4% of each transactions value. I wonder 
> > what the cost/transaction for a DD is?
> 
>  For us, DD is cheap, simple and reliable.
> 
>  It also has good points for the customer too, like immediate claw back 
>  for a number of reasons.

Although, FWIW, I have had one bad direct debit experience, which took 
lots of effort over months and months to resolve, and one bad credit 
card experience, which took about three minutes to resolve.

DD: Demon took money they were not entitled to.  It took some time to 
persuade them they were not entitled to it, and in the meantime they 
tried to help themselves to more money from my account, found the DD 
cancelled, so threatened to set a debt recovery agency on me.  This 
when actually they owed me money.  Meanwhile, my bank would not take 
any action because Demon said they were dealing with it.  The bank 
said they'd give me the refund if the merchant did not admit fault, 
but because Demon had admitted they were wrong, the bank said they 
wouldn't do anything.  Meanwhile, Demon carried on agreeing they were 
wrong, but didn't/wouldn't give my money back, and one bit of Demon 
continued to threaten me for not paying bills another bit of Demon had 
agreed were totally bogus.  Eventually, many months after the initial 
cockup (and some months after my transfer to A&A had successfully 
completed) I got a cheque - seems they like electronic transfer when 
money is coming in, but prefer the slowest possible means of making 
refund payments.  They would not pay me interest for the period when 
they had my money they were not entitled to.

CC: charge to an overseas website I didn't recognise appeared on my 
statement.  I typed URL into my computer and got pornography.  I 
phoned CC helpline and told them I didn't authorise that transaction.  
They credited the missing money, plus a second correction because 
exchange rates had changed in the meantime.

regards,   Ian SMith
-- 
  |\ /|      no .sig
  |o o|
  |/ \|

On 01 Jun 2008 08:35:36 GMT, Ian Smith wrote:

> DD: Demon took money they were not entitled to.
<snip tale of woe>

But that is down to Demon fupping up in it's accounts/customer service not 
the bank. Though I agree the banks and companies do wave the DD 
"guarantee" flag with some gusto but when you really look at it the 
circumstances in which you'll get a refund via it are very limited, as you 
found out.

I too have had a run in with Demon after I closed my account with them. IIRC I owed them money but they couldn't produce an invoice for it and Idon't pay bills without some form proof that I owe the money they say I do. I also tell my bank to remove any unwanted DD's from my account when I 
don't want them any more. I don't trust the benificaries to tell the bank 
it's no longer required or b) not to make any other (automatic) debits.

Conversley I've had more trouble with CCs than DD. The fraud prevention on 
my Visa card seems to be a bit "trigger happy", though for basically sound 
reasons. Sometimes when buying something online the merchants system does 
a small "test" transaction for say £1 this orginates overseas, then they 
try and put through the main transaction that orginates in another country 
and quite sensibly in some respects, Visa spots this hypersonic card andstops the main transaction... grrrr...

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

Ian Smith wrote:
> 
> DD: Demon took money they were not entitled to.  It took some time to 
> persuade them they were not entitled to it, and in the meantime they 
> tried to help themselves to more money from my account, found the DD 
> cancelled, so threatened to set a debt recovery agency on me.  This 
> when actually they owed me money.  Meanwhile, my bank would not take 
> any action because Demon said they were dealing with it.  The bank 
> said they'd give me the refund if the merchant did not admit fault, 
> but because Demon had admitted they were wrong, the bank said they 
> wouldn't do anything.  Meanwhile, Demon carried on agreeing they were 
> wrong, but didn't/wouldn't give my money back, and one bit of Demon 
> continued to threaten me for not paying bills another bit of Demon had 
> agreed were totally bogus.  Eventually, many months after the initial 
> cockup (and some months after my transfer to A&A had successfully 
> completed) I got a cheque - seems they like electronic transfer when 
> money is coming in, but prefer the slowest possible means of making 
> refund payments.  They would not pay me interest for the period when 
> they had my money they were not entitled to.

That's Demon all over. When I left it took over 6 months to get my refund. 
They kept waiting for weeks and then emailing asking me to tell them my home 
address to send the cheque. It was the same address I had had all along since 
joining Demon in 1994!

I agree that the bank should not wash its hands of the matter, though.

Your experience with credit cards is not entirely typical. I had a similar 
payment to a porn site I'd never heard of. The bank were OK about it, but it 
took a lot longer than a few minutes and they had to cancel my card and send 
me one with a new number, taking a couple of months. Fortunately I had a 
second card to cover for such eventualities.

A friend found he had been charged £2000 for air tickets by a travel agent in 
Barcelona (which he was nowhere near at the time). The bank claimed if was 
made with chip and PIN (which apparently didn't exist in Spain at the time), 
and so was infallible. The police said they don't deal with credit card fraud 
cases any more as that's the bank's job. The only way my friend was able to 
get anything sorted out was to find out (probably illegally) that the airline 
tickets had been issued to Arabs and were to somewhere like Jordan - at which 
point the anti-terrorist police suddenly took an interest and it was 
eventually sorted out.

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008, Dave Liquorice <> wrote:
>  On 01 Jun 2008 08:35:36 GMT, Ian Smith wrote:
> 
> > DD: Demon took money they were not entitled to.
> <snip tale of woe>
> 
>  But that is down to Demon fupping up in it's accounts/customer 
>  service not the bank. Though I agree the banks and companies do 
>  wave the DD "guarantee" flag with some gusto but when you really 
>  look at it the circumstances in which you'll get a refund via it 
>  are very limited, as you found out.

I agree absolutely it's down to the uselessness of Demon's accounts 
systems - the point was (as you confirm) that the guarantee of fixing 
anything that goes wrong is not so useful in at least some cases.  It 
seems a supplier that knows the ins-and-outs can effectively get a six 
month interest-free loan from my bank account (take money - admit 
fault so bank leaves them alone - wait six months before paying it 
back).

Having said which, I do use DD, and do have DD set up with A&A.

regards,   Ian SMith
-- 
  |\ /|      no .sig
  |o o|
  |/ \|

Ian Smith wrote:
> 
> Although, FWIW, I have had one bad direct debit experience, which took 
> lots of effort over months and months to resolve, and one bad credit 
> card experience, which took about three minutes to resolve.
> 

Without wanting to promote one or the other (as I've not had any real 
problems with either - touch wood), those two examples are a bit of an 
unfair comparison.

One is showing that a bad DD merchant can mess things up, while the 
other is showing that it is possible to charge you even if you've never 
heard of the merchant.

Would it have been much difference if things where the other way round?

If Demon had been charging by continuous credit charge, would it still 
have taken months to sort?

If the website had been charging by Direct Debit, would they have been 
able to charge you in the first place, and would it have been a five 
minute fix if they had?

In article <slrng45agj.gq8.ian@acheron.smithnet>, Ian Smith 
 wrote
>the point was (as you confirm) that the guarantee of fixing
>anything that goes wrong is not so useful in at least some cases.  It
>seems a supplier that knows the ins-and-outs can effectively get a six
>month interest-free loan from my bank account (take money - admit
>fault so bank leaves them alone - wait six months before paying it
>back).

If the collecting organisation or the customer's bank makes an error 
with a DD, the entitlement of the customer to a full and immediate 
refund from the customer's bank is not conditional:

<http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Consumers/Direct+Debit/Your+rights/>

HTH,

-- 
Bob Evans

On Sun, 1 Jun 2008, Bob Evans <> wrote:
>  In article <slrng45agj.gq8.ian@acheron.smithnet>, Ian Smith 
>  wrote
> >
> >the point was (as you confirm) that the guarantee of fixing
> >anything that goes wrong is not so useful in at least some cases.
> 
>  If the collecting organisation or the customer's bank makes an error 
>  with a DD, the entitlement of the customer to a full and immediate 
>  refund from the customer's bank is not conditional:
> 
> <http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Consumers/Direct+Debit/Your+rights/>

I know it says that, but the bank just wouldn't (because Demon said 
they were sorting it out) and Demon just didn't.  There is then 
simply nothing you can do - it doesn't matter what the words say, you 
actually cannot do anything, other than launch some form of legal 
action, and that is not exactly a trivial step to take.

regards,   Ian SMith
-- 
  |\ /|      no .sig
  |o o|
  |/ \|

Ian Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 31 May 2008 21:43:04 +0100, Adrian Kennard  wrote:
>>  Dave Liquorice wrote:
>>> On Sat, 31 May 2008 13:00:40 +0100, Alan Clifford wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't do direct debits.
>>> Your choice. Pay the CC surcharge should A&A bring one in. Remember that 
>>> the CC company gets around 3 or 4% of each transactions value. I wonder 
>>> what the cost/transaction for a DD is?
>>  For us, DD is cheap, simple and reliable.
>>
>>  It also has good points for the customer too, like immediate claw back 
>>  for a number of reasons.
> 
> Although, FWIW, I have had one bad direct debit experience, which took 
> lots of effort over months and months to resolve, and one bad credit 
> card experience, which took about three minutes to resolve.
> 
> DD: Demon took money they were not entitled to.  It took some time to 
> persuade them they were not entitled to it, and in the meantime they 
> tried to help themselves to more money from my account, found the DD 
> cancelled, so threatened to set a debt recovery agency on me.  This 
> when actually they owed me money.  Meanwhile, my bank would not take 
> any action because Demon said they were dealing with it.  The bank 
> said they'd give me the refund if the merchant did not admit fault, 
> but because Demon had admitted they were wrong, the bank said they 
> wouldn't do anything.  Meanwhile, Demon carried on agreeing they were 
> wrong, but didn't/wouldn't give my money back, and one bit of Demon 
> continued to threaten me for not paying bills another bit of Demon had 
> agreed were totally bogus.  Eventually, many months after the initial 
> cockup (and some months after my transfer to A&A had successfully 
> completed) I got a cheque - seems they like electronic transfer when 
> money is coming in, but prefer the slowest possible means of making 
> refund payments.  They would not pay me interest for the period when 
> they had my money they were not entitled to.

Naughty of your bank as DD is meant to be "refund first, ask questions 
later"...

The way it works is that if the payment is not valid for any of various 
reasons your bank should give an immediate refund. The merchant can 
dispute this and it be reversed if they are right, in some cases, but 
the initial refund should be immediate by the bank. So naught bank.

> CC: charge to an overseas website I didn't recognise appeared on my 
> statement.  I typed URL into my computer and got pornography.  I 
> phoned CC helpline and told them I didn't authorise that transaction.  
> They credited the missing money, plus a second correction because 
> exchange rates had changed in the meantime.

Well done. Usual process is disputed card payments held in limbo, on 
your account, until dispute resolved. Often not as nice as DD disputes.

Ian Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jun 2008, Bob Evans <> wrote:
>>  In article <slrng45agj.gq8.ian@acheron.smithnet>, Ian Smith 
>>  wrote
>>> the point was (as you confirm) that the guarantee of fixing
>>> anything that goes wrong is not so useful in at least some cases.
>>  If the collecting organisation or the customer's bank makes an error 
>>  with a DD, the entitlement of the customer to a full and immediate 
>>  refund from the customer's bank is not conditional:
>>
>> <http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Consumers/Direct+Debit/Your+rights/>
> 
> I know it says that, but the bank just wouldn't (because Demon said 
> they were sorting it out) and Demon just didn't.  There is then 
> simply nothing you can do - it doesn't matter what the words say, you 
> actually cannot do anything, other than launch some form of legal 
> action, and that is not exactly a trivial step to take.

i have found sitting in the open-plan office of the bank saying "it says 
IMMEDIATE refund, so I'll sit and wait while you sort it" has the 
desired effect.

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:33:59, Stuart Clark <> wrote:
>  Ian Smith wrote:
> > 
> > Although, FWIW, I have had one bad direct debit experience, which 
> > took lots of effort over months and months to resolve, and one bad 
> > credit card experience, which took about three minutes to resolve.
>
>  Would it have been much difference if things where the other way round?
> 
>  If Demon had been charging by continuous credit charge, would it still 
>  have taken months to sort?

I expect so - it has always taken months to get every Demon cockup 
sorted out.  The point was not so much that DD is prone to cockups, as 
that when you get a bunch like Demon, the 'guarantee' is not the 
universal solution that it is portrayed to be.
 
regards,   Ian SMith
-- 
  |\ /|      no .sig
  |o o|
  |/ \|

In article <slrng45o6r.ieb.ian@acheron.smithnet>, Ian Smith 
 wrote
>On Sun, 1 Jun 2008, Bob Evans <> wrote:
>>  In article <slrng45agj.gq8.ian@acheron.smithnet>, Ian Smith
>>  wrote
>> >
>> >the point was (as you confirm) that the guarantee of fixing
>> >anything that goes wrong is not so useful in at least some cases.
>>
>>  If the collecting organisation or the customer's bank makes an error
>>  with a DD, the entitlement of the customer to a full and immediate
>>  refund from the customer's bank is not conditional:
>>
>> <http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Consumers/Direct+Debit/Your+rights/>
>
>I know it says that, but the bank just wouldn't (because Demon said
>they were sorting it out)

Then, irrespective of what Demon did or did not do, if the DD was 
incorrect then your bank's response was simply wrong and it needs to 
retrain the staff concerned.

>There is then simply nothing you can do

There are plenty of things you might have done - for example threatening 
to move your account or to make a formal complaint to BACS and/or the 
Financial Ombudsman or to bring the matter of their failure to comply 
with the terms of the DD Guarantee to the attention of the business 
editor of your national newspaper.  Any one of those ought to have been 
sufficient to get the matter escalated to a manager with the necessary 
authority to bang heads.

<http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/27/27-
directdebit-guarantee.htm>

Regards,

-- 
Bob Evans

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:15:38 +0100, Adrian Kennard wrote:
>> CC: charge to an overseas website I didn't recognise appeared on my
>> statement.  I typed URL into my computer and got pornography.  I phoned
>> CC helpline and told them I didn't authorise that transaction. They
>> credited the missing money, plus a second correction because exchange
>> rates had changed in the meantime.
> 
> Well done. Usual process is disputed card payments held in limbo, on
> your account, until dispute resolved. Often not as nice as DD disputes.

No, I've had several credit card chargebacks on different cards/banks 
over the years. Some completely fraudulent, some where there was a 
transaction but the other party screwed up.

Every single one has been handled with no fuss and an immediate refund. 
Your rights as a consumer against credit card fraud are very strong and 
the banks know it.

The only time I ever had an issue with credit card was a continuous 
credit card authority with a (non-Demon) internet provider. The card 
company insisted they couldn't cancel it even when I cancelled the card. 
That was a whole lot of hassle, and I wouldn't ever do continuous credit 
card again.

As for DD it's very easy to cancel, but I've always had to get owed money 
directly from the company, not from the bank so far.

Cheers,
Martin.

Martin Ebourne wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:15:38 +0100, Adrian Kennard wrote:
>>> CC: charge to an overseas website I didn't recognise appeared on my
>>> statement.  I typed URL into my computer and got pornography.  I phoned
>>> CC helpline and told them I didn't authorise that transaction. They
>>> credited the missing money, plus a second correction because exchange
>>> rates had changed in the meantime.
>> Well done. Usual process is disputed card payments held in limbo, on
>> your account, until dispute resolved. Often not as nice as DD disputes.
> 
> No, I've had several credit card chargebacks on different cards/banks 
> over the years. Some completely fraudulent, some where there was a 
> transaction but the other party screwed up.
> 
> Every single one has been handled with no fuss and an immediate refund. 
> Your rights as a consumer against credit card fraud are very strong and 
> the banks know it.
> 
> The only time I ever had an issue with credit card was a continuous 
> credit card authority with a (non-Demon) internet provider. The card 
> company insisted they couldn't cancel it even when I cancelled the card. 
> That was a whole lot of hassle, and I wouldn't ever do continuous credit 
> card again.
> 
> As for DD it's very easy to cancel, but I've always had to get owed money 
> directly from the company, not from the bank so far.
> 
Similar experience in both respects.
I too have had no trouble at all with fraudulent and erroneous credit
cards transactions - there has always been a quick and hassle free credit.

I had a continuous authority failure with BT in the 80s which they
actually called a "direct debit", but of course with a credit card.   I
forget the name, but this was pre-internet where one could get messaging
and telex facilities via dial-up. Clever stuff at the time, and I even
got paged when I got a telex. After 6 months of billing me when I no
longer had an account, and a half page article by Tony Hetherington in
the Times featuring my photograph, the credit card cancelled it and
refunded me.  BT took a while longer to catch up (8-)#



-- 
      Tony Firshman
<firstname>@<surname>.co.uk

Tony Firshman wrote:
> Similar experience in both respects.
> I too have had no trouble at all with fraudulent and erroneous credit
> cards transactions - there has always been a quick and hassle free credit.
> 
> I had a continuous authority failure with BT in the 80s which they
> actually called a "direct debit", but of course with a credit card.   I
> forget the name, but this was pre-internet where one could get messaging
> and telex facilities via dial-up. Clever stuff at the time, and I even
> got paged when I got a telex. After 6 months of billing me when I no
> longer had an account, and a half page article by Tony Hetherington in
> the Times featuring my photograph, the credit card cancelled it and
> refunded me.  BT took a while longer to catch up (8-)#

This must be a new meaning of the phrase "hassle free" that I haven't 
encountered before.

Alfred E Neuman wrote:
> Tony Firshman wrote:
>> Similar experience in both respects.
>> I too have had no trouble at all with fraudulent and erroneous credit
>> cards transactions - there has always been a quick and hassle free 
>> credit.
>>
>> I had a continuous authority failure with BT in the 80s which they
>> actually called a "direct debit", but of course with a credit card.   I
>> forget the name, but this was pre-internet where one could get messaging
>> and telex facilities via dial-up. Clever stuff at the time, and I even
>> got paged when I got a telex. After 6 months of billing me when I no
>> longer had an account, and a half page article by Tony Hetherington in
>> the Times featuring my photograph, the credit card cancelled it and
>> refunded me.  BT took a while longer to catch up (8-)#
> 
> This must be a new meaning of the phrase "hassle free" that I haven't 
> encountered before.
I meant the normal purchases, not the 'direct debit' issue.

...... but you knew that (8-)#

-- 
      Tony Firshman
<firstname>@<surname>.co.uk

Tony Firshman wrote:
> Alfred E Neuman wrote:
> 
>> This must be a new meaning of the phrase "hassle free" that I haven't 
>> encountered before.
> 
> I meant the normal purchases, not the 'direct debit' issue.
> 
> ...... but you knew that (8-)#

Ah ... right ... in that case I agree. Credit cards are an excellent way to 
avoid carrying lots of cash, and as I pay mine off every month (by direct 
debit) I never have to pay any interest. Of course, if I was with someone 
like Egg, they would probably decide I was not profitable enough and so cut 
me off with some guff about being a poor credit risk (despite never having 
been in arrears in my life) ... but fortunately the Co-op bank don't seem to 
be like that.

Anyway, the point of this thread is surely the relative difficulty of sorting 
out cockups in DD versus credit card, not the normal operation, which I find 
to be smooth and convenient in both cases.

My only hassles with DD have been with people like the council, who like to 
set up a new DD authority every year even though it's completely unnecessary. 
When I cleared out some of these old DDs I discovered that every one of these 
results in a letter to the former recipient telling them I had cancelled it. 
Council people being rather thick assumed I had cancelled the current DD and 
sent me a paying-in book to pay in cash at the Post Office! Then when I 
explained the situation they set up a new DD with the usual paragraph "this 
replaces all earlier direct debits to this recipient" ... so of course the 
former "current" DD got cancelled, a letter got sent, I got sent a new 
paying-in book, and the whole process repeated. In the end I think what I did 
was cancel every DD to the council, wait until the letters got sent, then set 
up a new DD from scratch. This is not a criticism of the DD system, but of 
idiots like the council who don't know how to use it properly.

In article <48468a38$0$664$5a6aecb4@news.aaisp.net.uk>, 
whatmeworry@nospam.invalid says...

> 
> My only hassles with DD have been with people like the council, who like to 
> set up a new DD authority every year even though it's completely unnecessary. 
> When I cleared out some of these old DDs I discovered that every one of these 
> results in a letter to the former recipient telling them I had cancelled it. 
> Council people being rather thick assumed I had cancelled the current DD and 
> sent me a paying-in book to pay in cash at the Post Office! Then when I 
> explained the situation they set up a new DD with the usual paragraph "this 
> replaces all earlier direct debits to this recipient" ... so of course the 
> former "current" DD got cancelled, a letter got sent, I got sent a new 
> paying-in book, and the whole process repeated. In the end I think what I did 
> was cancel every DD to the council, wait until the letters got sent, then set 
> up a new DD from scratch. This is not a criticism of the DD system, but of 
> idiots like the council who don't know how to use it properly.

Which illustrates why you should never use CCA for such payments. At 
least, with DD you could manage the incompetence of the Council... :-)

Personally, I would never again use CCA, following on from my experience 
with BG. They had managed to get a charge put on an old, defunct card, 
which carried an annual renewal charge.  Apparently, the BG CCA charge 
caused it to be reactivated and the annual charge(s) raised.  It took 
months to get all these charges, late payment "fines", etc. reversed via 
expensive phone calls from abroad, even though I wasn't then a BG 
customer, a current customer of that CC company or even at the address 
to where the CC company were sending the bills...  Apparently an old 
bill was showing as unpaid (it wasn't) and I previously had a CCA with 
them. 

At least my old move from Demon went smoothly, unlike others - After 
cancelling my Demon account, I just cancelled the DD with my bank and so 
any notification that went to their finance dept. would have closed the 
loop.

-- 
John W
To mail me replace the obvious with .co.uk twice

On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:27:35 +0100, Alfred E Neuman wrote:

> This is not a criticism of the DD system, but of idiots like the council 
> who don't know how to use it properly.

Or poor programming of the computer system they use, in the automated 
payment book sending etc. 

With Council Tax being 10 monthly DD payments then two months "off" it 
doesn't sit well with a continuouse monthly payment. So setting up a new 
one each year is away around that but they should be set up so they expire 
after 10 payments. That is possible as the DD for my car loan finished a 
while back and the authority for it disappeared from my account without me 
doing anything and the last payment entry on my satement said "This is the 
last payment" OWTTE.

Of course the banks don't send the money until they are asked for it so 
the council could simply not do the CT DD run for two months but the 
consequencies of cocking that up aren't good. Think of all the bank 
charges they would be liable for if people went overdrawn or had other 
things bounce etc...

National Insurance is another one that was a bit odd but I thhink that has 
now changed. The monthly self employed stamp varies depending on how many 
weeks the month covers, they used to have seperate DDs one for one amount 
one for the other. I think that has changed now and they are using the 
single variable DD option.

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice"  writes:

> With Council Tax being 10 monthly DD payments then two months "off" it 
> doesn't sit well with a continuouse monthly payment. So setting up a new 
> one each year is away around that but they should be set up so they expire 
> after 10 payments.

I wonder how much money councils waste by setting up a new DD every
year? Especially considering the amount that council tax has risen
(higher than (official) inflation every year), a more sensible approach
would be to take 12 monthly payments. This would result in a 16 2/3%
decrease in monthly payment. Even worse is the water, which is taken as
8 payments, so would benefit by reducing each payment by 1/3 if made
over 12 months.

On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:27:59 UTC, John Weston 
<invalid@earlsway.invalid> wrote:

> Personally, I would never again use CCA, following on from my experience 
> with BG. They had managed to get a charge put on an old, defunct card, 
> which carried an annual renewal charge.  Apparently, the BG CCA charge 
> caused it to be reactivated and the annual charge(s) raised.  It took 
> months to get all these charges, late payment "fines", etc. reversed via 
> expensive phone calls from abroad, even though I wasn't then a BG 
> customer, a current customer of that CC company or even at the address 
> to where the CC company were sending the bills...  Apparently an old 
> bill was showing as unpaid (it wasn't) and I previously had a CCA with 
> them. 

Apparently the trick here is when you send back the cut up card and 
close the account, to specify that you will not be responsible for 
payment of any further charges against the card.
-- 
Regards
Dave Saville

NB Remove nospam. for good email address

In article ,
Martin Ebourne   wrote:
>As for DD it's very easy to cancel, but I've always had to get owed money 
>directly from the company, not from the bank so far.
>
 I've never had any difficulty with going into my bank and saying
"this here direct debit payment, I didn't authorise that" and getting
my money back (usually next day but backdated to the date of
complaint, my bank is a little slow, but not totally inept in this
area).

 I haven't had to try the "Please refund this payment and don't accept
any future requests from this merchant" line yet though.

-- 
Jonathan Amery.      Even in the darkness
   #####                There's a light to light your way
  #######__o         Though the world you knew is gone
  #######'/             A world you thought would always stay - Mark Dennis

In article ,
Graham Murray   wrote:
>I wonder how much money councils waste by setting up a new DD every
>year? Especially considering the amount that council tax has risen
>(higher than (official) inflation every year), a more sensible approach
>would be to take 12 monthly payments. 

 The theory behind the 10-month thing is that it allows them to deal
with problems or people starting payments at inconvenient times by
extending the payment period into the last two months instead of having
unreasonably large payments for part of the period.  I'm not sure this
is worth the candle, but...

-- 
Jonathan Amery.  Old man Robert opened the wardrobe door, and who was standing
   #####         there but none other than long lost cousin Archibold who he
  #######__o     had last seen on a Polynesian pirate ship seventy three years
  #######'/      previously.       - src34 (with apologies to Charles Dickens)

Graham Murray wrote:
> "Dave Liquorice"  writes:
> 
>> With Council Tax being 10 monthly DD payments then two months "off" it 
>> doesn't sit well with a continuouse monthly payment. So setting up a new 
>> one each year is away around that but they should be set up so they expire 
>> after 10 payments.
> 
> I wonder how much money councils waste by setting up a new DD every
> year? Especially considering the amount that council tax has risen
> (higher than (official) inflation every year), a more sensible approach
> would be to take 12 monthly payments. This would result in a 16 2/3%
> decrease in monthly payment. Even worse is the water, which is taken as
> 8 payments, so would benefit by reducing each payment by 1/3 if made
> over 12 months.

DD setup does not cost.
Well, does not cost us anyway, we only pay for the actual collection.

It's not hard for them to do it right either, so why they make it 
difficult I don't know.

On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:00:25 퍝, Graham Murray wrote:

> a more sensible approach would be to take 12 monthly payments. 

I quite like the two month payment holiday just after Christmas but thenour total CT is £260﹪➶...

> Even worse is the water, which is taken as 8 payments, 

That does seem a bit odd. Our water (United Utils) is 2 payments just over 
£110 a time. That can be a bit of surprise, I wonder if they do monthly 
without any added cost?

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
> That does seem a bit odd. Our water (United Utils) is 2 payments just over 
> £110 a time. That can be a bit of surprise, I wonder if they do monthly 
> without any added cost?

Monthly usually means you pay a (usually overestimated) amount in advance, so 
they make a profit out of interest on your balance, and use the overestimated 
payments as capital. Unless they give a discount for paying monthly, put your 
own monthly payments into a high interest savings account instead and pay in 
arrears every 6 months.

On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:45:55 퍝, Alfred E Neuman wrote:

>> That does seem a bit odd. Our water (United Utils) is 2 payments just>> over £110 a time. That can be a bit of surprise, I wonder if they do 
>> monthly without any added cost?
> 
> Monthly usually means you pay a (usually overestimated) amount in 
> advance, so they make a profit out of interest on your balance, and use 
> the overestimated payments as capital. 

Except this is water and a fixed amount per year.  B-)

For the metered utility (electric) I keep a very close eye on the DD 
payment amount and the account balance. If a significant credit builds up 
(>£50) after the winter I knock back the DD amount. Yes they make a bit in 
the summer from my "overpayment" but the fixed regular payment makes foreasier budgeting and keeping the account just in credit avoids having tofind a balancing payment or have rather higher DD the next year to pay any 
debt off.

-- 
Cheers
Dave.