Why they won’t is that it requires them to have banking facilities in every market and all markets would have to support DDs.
Easier for them to have a single, global payment mechanism.
That’s my guess anyway.
Note: I’m sure these companies do have banking facilities in most/all markets, but there are likely for salaries and/or royalty payments etc and they are not geared up for DDs or their local equivalents.
Either way, it’s a pain for us.
Sorry for the late replies, Monzo froze my forum membership as I was new.
It was a DD and not a CPA.
Eventually after waiting for a “specialist” someone finally did the indemnity claim for me.
The customer advocacy (complaint) team contacted me today and told me that companies are within their right to reactivate a direct debit I’ve cancelled. This is utter nonsense as it requires my permission, Monzo are basically saying cancelling a direct debit has no impact as they can just set it up again without my permission and claim it.
I’m really disappointed as I’ve just done a full switch to Monzo and this experience has been so poor. Requesting a DD indemnity should be so straight forward but it has been a nightmare.
Overall I still enjoy Monzo so I won’t switch away but I feel really disappointed and wary now. Monzo is 90% fantastic but the 10% they get wrong they seem to get very wrong.
I’ve made a formal complaint and the advocacy team have said they won’t be upholding it but I will get a formal reply within 15 working days. I’ve made clear I am not after any compensation I just want them to accept they are wrong and apologise.
Yeah, that doesn’t seem right. We process direct debits for our customers and I know that there’s a whole load of rules and regs on getting permission etc. All of ours are done electronically but if the customer HAS to fill it out - We’re not allowed to do it on their behalf (if for example they gave their bank details over the phone). But there’s no way for us to ‘reactivate’ a DD mandate once the customer has cancelled it.
Yes, we can send a new one for them to fill out. But not reactivate the old one.
Be interested to hear what the outcome of this is. I know they’ve been hiring pretty aggressively lately so I’d hope this is just an honest mistake and put it down to lack of training (still unacceptable but slightly more understandable).
That’s utter crap. Maybe Monzo’s “specialists” should ask Tom’s old company what the rules are.
Firstly the Direct Debit guarantee is so watertight, and established, there should be absolutely no need to escalate to a specialist.
Secondly, if the complaints team are this inept, or are lying, then I worry about the state of the operations as a whole. The recent delays (we’re back here yet again!) are proving that, as always, customer service is Monzo’s Achilles heel.
They wanted me to send in my terms and conditions with the company, I kept saying I didn’t need to. I kept saying I didn’t authorise them to set it up again so had no advance notice which meant I was entitled to a refund. Like I said it is only £6 so the money isn’t a problem I’m just annoyed at Monzo not delivering up to the guarantee. I think they perhaps have some new staff who don’t seem to understand the rules.
did the latest payment have a different refernce to others?
I’m guessing this is the problem and why they want to see the terms and conditions
Under the Direct Debit Guarantee, the rules around refunds are particularly strong. A customer can request a refund (known as an “indemnity claim”) for any payment, and provided the bank agrees with the validity of their indemnity claim, the customer will receive an immediate refund. Further, there is no time limit on when indemnity claims can be made
I’m in agreement with @j06 here; that’s utter crap, and you’re right to be annoyed.
I’m annoyed and disappointed at Monzo too, on your behalf. The Direct Debit scheme is clear, they shouldn’t be getting something like this wrong!
Even a cursory Google search will find the Which? guide that @Chapuys linked to earlier, which lays everything out clearly.
You’re absolutely right to file a complaint in this case, and if they haven’t changed their tune when you get a final resolution letter from them, I would encourage you to take your complaint on to the Ombudsman - if you follow the Which? guide mentioned above there’s more information on how to do that.
Sort-of-ETA: Just seen you posted another reply why I was writing this:
Send in this quote from the Which? guide linked earlier:
It’s irrelevant whether you owe the money. What’s relevant is that the bank paid out the sum under a cancelled direct debit
These are the kind of rules that will have been documented for the support team’s reference. And if the COp wasn’t sure what the rule was then they won’t have guessed, they’d have checked. The fact that the complaint wasn’t upheld - after it was checked by a second pair of eyes - shows that they didn’t make a mistake here.
Hi @Trr1985, if you’d like to send me your email address in a DM I can look into this from our side if you feel this was handled badly.
For the other folks in this thread, as I’m sure you can understand, I’m unable to share details of the conversation from our side, but I can assure you that all complaints are fully investigated.
As there isn’t really much more to say about this publicly, I’m going to take the decision to close this thread.