Card transactions by proxy

[Ian Batten]

> 
> What we were originally promised regarding the Direct Debit Guarantee was that you tell the *bank* to return the money and they do it straightaway. However, the banks don't like it much, so they have all told their employees to resist such demands as far as possible and to tell the customer to "contact their supplier first".

No, they really haven't.   Junior staff who don't understand the system think that their employer would want them to do this, and therefore do it.   The only thing such a policy would do, if it existed, would be to trigger expensive FSA-reportable complaints.  If you can find any evidence at all that such a policy is in operation at a bank (and I realise one of the characteristics of conspiracies is that no-one will talk, and that low-paid bank cashiers are fully sworn-in members of the conspiracy who will die before they talk) then produce it.   The FSA will (see http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Communication/PR/2009/146.shtml for their current regulations) will be very interested to hear it.

> If a debit is made from a customer’s credit or debit card, or indeed a direct debit, and it is more than they could reasonably have expected, the entire amount must be refunded by the bank unless they can provide evidence to justify refusing the refund.  They must do so within 10 days.   

You're claiming that there is an official policy within banks to blatantly disregard the instructions of the FSA?   Nat West recently got fined £2.8m for weak complaints procedures (http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/final/rbs_11jan11.pdf) and are baring their teeth at the rest, and that's just about sloppy procedures and general inattention.  An organised policy of direct defiance of the regulatory regime? My, they'd get some fines for that.

By the way, the latest publication on the FSA website: http://www.fscc.gov.uk/documents/final/GE-L01226.pdf --- read it, note its length, note the topic at hand, and see if you can get your jaw off the floor.

ian