<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 5 Apr 2011, at 13:53, Matthew Pemble wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote">On 5 April 2011 13:40, Roland Perry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lists@internetpolicyagency.com">lists@internetpolicyagency.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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But the principle remains, that you lose control of the money and all the initiative is with the customer to chase up 'errors and omissions'.<font color="#888888"><br></font></blockquote><div><br>Or, frankly, as Jeremy Clarkson found out to his cost (and I have experienced with my wife being able to set up a DD on the one non-"joint and several" account I have), anyone can set up a DD with your account because there is no effective checking.<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well, if you think that (for payments of a few hundred pounds or less) there's any greater policing of cheques or standing orders, I've got a bridge to sell you. And if your fear is that DDs can be set up by anyone without checking, the saloon bar "oh, DDs are dangerous, that's why I don't have any" won't help you --- unless you can convince your bank to tag your account "no DDs to be set up", which I suspect that this side of Coutt's you can't.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>
<br>Which can be inconvenient, embarrassing or could even be job threatening. </div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Failing to pay your phone bill can be equally bad. We shifted all our utilities and suchlike onto DDs when my wife was ill during her first pregnancy: it meant that if we had to suddenly drop everything and decamp to hospital for a month, we wouldn't have our utilities cut off for non-payment. I've noticed a strong correlation between "DDs are evil and I don't have any because I pay all my bills over the counter with cheques" and "man living on own" --- for most people, there's a time/money/risk tradeoff for which DDs are an entirely rational response. Running my eye down the last payment dates and amounts on the DDs takes a couple of minutes, online, once every few months; paying ~30 regular bills per month by cheque would take rather longer, and be a great deal more error prone.</div><div><br></div><div>ian</div></body></html>