I am in the same boat regarding Setanta. I signed up 5 months ago to receive Setanta via my freeview box.
The offer was free for 2 months though a 10.99 connection fee. It said i could cancel at any time as long as i gave 30 days notice and was before my payment date. So the just before 2 months were up i cancelled by sending an email to (requests@setanta.com) which is what they say on their T's and C's. I received no reply, though it has been opened as I requested reply on opening. So i was expecting my Setanta to switch off after the 16th which is payment day.
I hardly watched the channel as it is pretty poor coverage of sports. So I look at my bank account and see that i have been charged £15.99 on the 16th of the month. I should never have been charged this so i cancelled my
direct debit via my online bank account.
1 day after this i have a
phone call from Setanta saying why I have cancelled my
direct debit. I explain to them that i sent them a cancellation request and they have ignored it and taken money out of my account. They say they do not have any cancellation request on their system, so i explain to them that i sent my request over 1 month ago and have the proof of this. The guy says there must have been a problem or something and explained that in order to cancel they do need to have my
direct debit details. So i agreed to give them my debit details again, and he assured me that if the request was made 30 days before payment then no further payments would be taken. This is not what they say on their T's and C's but i just said to myself forget about the 15.99 that has been taken last month, no other payments will be taken so end of story. I also forwarded the email i had originally sent to the same address asking them to respond to my original cancellation request. No reply., though again the mail has been opened.
16th of this month comes along, and yet again £15.99 is taken from my account. So i again cancel my direct debit details online, and sure enough i get a call from Setanta asking why i have cancelled payment. I got into an argument with the docile divvy from Setanta claiming that I have cancelled my subscription. He goes on to say , as they did previous (no record of cancellation) I explain the same situation again, and he says that they require 30 days notice of cancellation for them to cancel. I explain to them again that my cancellation request was made OVER 2 months ago, and if it is right what they are saying then the 1st £15.99 was correctly taken and that should have been my last payment, and they should not have taken this months payment from me. They say that they must be processing my cancellation request and it takes a while, but for the cancelation to provide they do require my payment detail. I refused to give it to them as they have taken money out of my account when they should not have. He then says that without payment details on the account no cancellation will go through.
Why is it so bloody difficult to cancel a subscription. They have been on the phone 3 times today, 3 different operatiors demanding payment details. I am not going to give them my details again. I also would like a refund of £15.99.
I am not sure what to do now, as clearly they do not know what the hell they are doing themselves, only taking peoples money illegally. Who should I write to? I see somebody wrote to the MD and had no acknowledgement ??
me V. Setanta 
