Credit Rating, Legal Advice Please.

[Alistairr]

As previously mentioned, my wife booked a cruise for her and her mother last week, She paid the balance £2057 over the phone to the Travel agent with her Switch card.
The Travel agent let a trainee put the transaction through the Streamline machine, and when asked for an authorisation code, she mistakenly put the last 3digits on the back of the card into the machine. They soon realised their mistake and phoned Streamline to ask if the Transaction had gone through ok, to which the reply was NO, you will need to put it through again.
So imagine my wife surprise yesterday when she tried to use her Switch to buy £5 of goods from B&Q and was told it had been declined.
It turns out the Travel company has put the payment through twice, and my wife is now £952 overdrawn..
A swift call to the Travel agents last night and a refund was made, My wife went straight to the bank when they opened this morning to make sure everything was ok, to be told there is already £100 of bank charges been made to your account, and the payment for your car loan had bounced.

So who is liable for the Bank Charges???? Us, The Travel agents or the Travel agent says that Streamline are liable and they will put a claim in for us!!!!! Bollox i said, our Transaction/contract was with you so YOU can pay any charges......

And more seriously will the fact that she missed a payment on her car loan go as black mark on her credit rating?
We have phoned the Fianance company and told them what happened and that the money is there now for the payment to be made, all they said was there would probably be another charge.

Yours Might P###ed off.

Alistair.

Bloody Incompetence!!!!!!!/forums/images/icons/mad.gif

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[tcm]

Re: bank charges

you shd go utterly raving ape (or get swmbo to do this) and get a credit for the bank charges. Note that all banks have slush fund accounts for bank charges from peeps who don't mind getting messed about, and also for paying back people credits of bank charges for people who ape, so they can easily credit you nae prob.

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[Alistairr]

Re: bank charges

I have just gone utterly ape with the Travel Agent, and told them if this isn't resolved quickly, then i'll be contacting my Lawyer!!!!!!!!


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[jfm]

This is Observer's territory and some of it is covered in the Cheques Act (though Scots law will be a bit different).

At first glance I would say the bank is liable to refund the charge. They posted a debit to your account that your wife had not authorised. Plainly, your wife only agreed to make one payment of £2057. Now, the bank can say that they got 2 electornic requests for payment from Streamline or whatever, but one was unauthorised and therefore the bank should not have posted the debit entry to your account. Streamline will of course have represented electronically to the bank that 2x£2057 payments were authorised by your wife, but that was a false representation. A lie, in fact. The bank is generally reponsible when a thrid party falsely states a payment is authorised (eg if someone stole your cheque book, and did a good forgery of your signature, and the bank paid out the cheque, the bank would be liable to refund everything to your account if you didn't actually sign or authorise the signing of the cheque)

Thus as a matter of law at no time in this whole thing did your wife ever owe the bank £952. She was not £952 overdrawn, all that happened was that the bank's records showed her to be £952 overdrawn, but she wasn't ACTUALLY overdrawn. I mean, there was no moment in time at which the bank held a £952 claim against your wife.

Hence, tell the bank to straighten it all out and refund all charges. Dont lose your rag, just tellem you will continue to press, escalating step by step, till they fix this.

All a bit imho. It's a long time since I studied retail banking law. Observer knows this stuff better than me I think.

Personally I wouldn't worry about the credit rating thing and the car loan.

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[Observer]

Hmmm - tricky.

Don't worry about credit rating - a single payment default will not be recorded except by the finance company concerned. Liability for charges is a bit more difficult.

If the travel agent was told and believed in good faith that the first transaction had not gone through, it's hard to see they were at fault in processing the second transaction. In addition, they corrected the error immediately you made them aware of it. The card processer was in error in giving duff information to the travel agent but the processing company is (probably) technically separate entity from your bank (although your bank probably has a shareholding).

I would turn up the heat on the bank (as the card issuer) and require them to sort it out wth the payment processer (Streamline). The problem will be getting to a person (in the bank) who has discretion and authority to credit the charges. I don't see how you can easily make a claim aginst the payment processer (Streamline) as there is no contractual relationship. If all else fails, they may owe you a duty of care which they didn't discharge and you could sue under tort. but that's awfully messy.

Start with the bank - firm and steady as advised by jfm. Think the travel agent should be excused.

Edited for clarification


<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://aflcharters.co.uk>Dream Dancer</A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Observer on 10/08/2004 12:02 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[Alistairr]

Thanks very much Observer and jfm.
This forum is great for getting answers to things that some of us may not know much about.

I didn't think i'd have much chance with the bank, but after reading your 2 replies, i'll certainly give it a try.
As jfm says, My wife only authorised 1 payment of £2057, so the second one was paid Falsely. I never thought about that.
The only problem i have now is speaking to the bank, as they usually only deal with the account holder, and my wife has already spoken to them this morning.
I doubt they will speak to me, but i'll try.
Looks like i may have been a bit hard with the Travel agents this morning.

Thanks very much for the informative replies.

Cheers.

Alistair.

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[gjgm]

Not sure about banks and slush funds, but of course a bank will have a ledger account for screw ups. As advised, stay cool. You arent going to get anywhere by peeing of your bank, who you are relying on for some goodwill really. You ll start fairly lowly in their food chain, but if you dont get a result, just keep being refered upwards. Get some info to hand about you as a valued client, (a/c balances,other business,length of bank relationship etc)and not being a mean fisted scot who leaves silch in his current a/c( for example, i mean!). If they can see that you are of present,past or future benefit to them they are more likely to help.

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[Nat]

Alistair
Be carefull that the Debit mandate has not been cancelled I deal with finance defaults quite a lot, In some cases once a payment has not been made the finance company will not ask for it again & a new standing order must be signed. I think the best way to deal with this is to send the finance co a cheque for the missing payment & double check with them if you need to sign a new mandate. Im far from a legal expert in these matters but I know from my line of business the grief it can cause, keep in contact with the finance co untill everything is back to normal if the next payment is not made a repo order will be next.
Hope you can get it sorted ok.............Nat

<hr width=100% size=1>2655 ! You can tell me, I'm a Docter !

 

[Guest]

Post deleted by danfoley

 

[Roy]

Alistairr

Call your bank - ask for the boss and explain whats happened, advise him/her that you are holding them accountable for credit rating repair, overpayment, charges etc etc. Be prepared to advise your manager that you will move your account to another bank immediately, otherwise. This is not gun to head negotiating. rather par for the course. You are important to the bank. You have the choice of banks.

Similar thing happened to me with RBS some years back and this firm and friendly approach did the trick for us. Cheers. Roy

<hr width=100% size=1>What does this mean then?

 

[Alistairr]

Funny though, this is the RBS as well.



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[Alistairr]

Thanks again all for the very good replies.

I take heed that it should maybe be the bank i should be approaching, but i've just had a call from the Director of the Travel Agents, saying they are very sorry and a letter stating what happened with a full appology will be in the post to me. And as soon as i know what the total bank charges are they will send my wife a cheque in the post. A possible result, We'll see.

As you say Nat, the thing we need to do is check that the fianance company are ok, and all will continue as normal.

Thanks again, for all the info. I'll let you know what happens.

Cheers

Alistair.


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[Observer]

That's a result. Taking responsibility for your own mistake is expected (although too rare); taking responsibility for somebody else's (even if they did make the initial error) shows very good customer service ethos. I'm sure you'll be using them again.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://aflcharters.co.uk>Dream Dancer</A>

 

[Alistairr]

Yes, We'll just need to see if they keep their word now.
I'm sending in a statement with all the charges, and they have promised to send a cheque out immediately.

Its amazing how banks come up with charges, there has been 4 charges regarding this mistake, and thats only been in a period of 4 days.
1. £30 Misuse of charge card. Second false payment of £2057 goes through.
2. £30 Misuse of Charge Card, DD payment for Car Bounced.
3. £20 Bank Charge
4. £20 Bank Charge(Which the bank says will not be charged till 19/09/04.) Why??

After the replies i have had on here, regarding the Banks conduct with the matter, my wife is going to go and speak to the manager and raise her concerns as to how this happened, and why she wasn't contacted to check that these payments were ok, and would she know it would put her £952 in debt.

Thanks again for all the Info.

Alistair.


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[gjgm]

why stay cool.. well bcz it isnt a clear cut case that the bank is liable here, so you are more likely to get a favourable outcome by not taking the view that the (local) manager you want to help you is personally responsible for thirld world debt, ransoms etc etc.
There are all sorts of types of banks, from conventional to supermarkets to internet.None of them are registered charities as far as I know, and all charge in some way or another for providing you with services. The level of charges and service varies....

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[tcm]

oh, she's going to go round and visit them, eh? I think *she* should summon *them* them for hairdrying. Far more satisfying.

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[lanason]

Well I'm surprisded that you paid £2057 for a cruise in the first place when you have Indy and a loch free of charge. !!!!! So what the update did they pay up ???

<hr width=100% size=1>Adrian <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.arweb.co.uk/argallery/kelisha>Kelisha</A> Nothing is better than a Holiday

 

[Alistairr]

I didn't pay for a cruise.... My good lady did, with the Mother-in-laws money, Her Treat. And i'm not going. While they are cruising the Med, i'll be out enjoying myself singlehanded with Indiana on Loch Lomond.

Ok, Sandra.... The very latest..... Streamline have accepted responceability, but need to investigate it before they pay out any money /forums/images/icons/crazy.gif. The Travel agent doesn't think we should wait any longer and said they would pay us and claim the money back from Streamline, and today(19th Aug.) we have just recieved a check through the post for the full amount of all the charges we occurred £124.96p. Plus the Travel agents have promised an Upgrade in cabins on the ship for them.
The Royal Bank of Scotland, Have been extremely unhelpful, and the Bank manager refused to talk to us on Monday, Someone else spoke to us in a side room, and when i asked some stern questions, i was told 'If you don't mind this is your wifes account not yours, I don't need to answer your questions', To which my wife repied "Yes you do!!!!". We complained to the head office about the way the matter was handled and for refusing to give us info, when they gave the same to Streamline. Head office said there was nothing to answer too, and wouldn't be taking the matter forward. And also why would a bank allow a transaction of £2057 to clear when there was only £1000 in the account without contacting us first, So needless to say, my wife is shutting the account immediatly now the matter is resolved.

Also i'd like to thank everyone on here very much for the Very good advice that was given to me. It is much appreciated.

Cheers.

Alistair.

Btw, Adrian, did you get my PM.


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[halcyon]

May be known, may not, but Streamline is the credit card handling side of Nat West, which is of caurse part of the RBS group.

Brian

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[Alistairr]

Yes, i found that out 2 days ago, after most of it had been sorted.Apparently they are all the same group.
It did surprice me as the Bank said they had done nothing wrong, and didn't authorise anything.



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