Card transactions by proxy

[Peter Mitchell]

Clive D.W. Feather wrote  on 5-04-11 19:01:
> Matthew Pemble said:
>> 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.
> 
> I've had one problem with DDs. One day I checked my statement to find a DD
> payment to someone I'd never heard of. The bank kept telling me that I
> would just get my money back under the DD Guarantee, but took ages to
> understand that I couldn't invoke it because I didn't know who the payee
> was and didn't have a DD with them. 

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".

It's one of the many examples of large organisations making 
promises to get us to accept something and then weaselling 
out on their promises later.

> It got sorted in the end, but took a
> while.
> 
> A friend in the USA gets his pay, just like I do, by bank transfer from the
> employer. Except that a few months ago he discovered that it was actually a
> sort of reverse DD: the employer had a cash flow issue and just took back
> everyone's pay a couple of days after he'd paid it! Does anyone know if
> that can happen here?

Certainly it can, the employer simply tells the bank they 
have DD authority over those accounts. The bank doesn't 
check, any more than it checked Jeremy Clarkson.


-- 
Pete Mitchell