Continued to pay for services after contract was cancelled

[Stuart Bulloch]

Jurisdiction

United Kingdom

We had a contract with a company to provide our home with an alarm system which had call centre support. After the contract was cancelled, by mutual understanding, my wife forgot to cancell the monthly standing order with the bank. After several months the service provider informed my wife that the standing order had still not been cancelled. As of September 2016 the payments were stopped, however, the service provider appears to be reluctant to repay the 24 months over payment and has said he is going to seek legal advice on this. My question is, where do we stand on this, are we wrong to expect him to repay the two years worth of payments as he had informed my wife or should he be obligated to return the monies as he did not provide the service?.

 

[mightymoose]

If you paid for services that were never provided then you will likely be refunded at some point, however do you know that the service was actually not provided? Was it active the entire time and you did not know?
The failure to cancel was on your end, not theirs.
For now, just wait and see what they are willing to do.

 

[adjusterjack]

After the contract was cancelled, by mutual understanding

You get anything in writing about that "mutual understanding"?

Your situation is just another example of why automatic payments are just plain evil scams on unwary customers.

If you had to have written a check every month, you wouldn't be having this problem.

You went two years without ever once noticing that your checking account was debited every month? Yikes.

 

[hrforme]

I work on the other side of automatic billing and am always amazed that the people who go months if not years and don't notice a debit that was supposed to be stopped. I tell our members to always check the very first month that they are not to be charged.

I do know that if you had paid by CC, you usually have 60-90 days to refute monthly charges. If you were the one to setup the monthly standing order (and tacitly approved it by not shutting it off), I am not sure there would be much you could do except possibly take him to small claims court.

This is why you should ALWAYS use a CC for monthly recurring charges because there is some protection that way. And why you should ALWAYS at least look at your bank statement/transactions online on a regular basis. Unfortunately sounds like this is a small business that doesn't reconcile direct to his bank income (what came in) with system income (what should be charged).

I doubt your have any recourse through your bank.

And I just noticed this was in the UK....my whole post is USA....but my ALWAYS still apply.

 

[army judge]

You get anything in writing about that "mutual understanding"?

Your situation is just another example of why automatic payments are just plain evil scams on unwary customers.

If you had to have written a check every month, you wouldn't be having this problem.

You went two years without ever once noticing that your checking account was debited every month? Yikes.

You done said a truthful mouthful, mate.
You done spitted some real knowledge.