Direct debit change

[Rich44]

I signed up to Freeola a few months back as they were doing free activation and only a 3 month contract as there were generous usage allowances.

Now Freeola are a reseller of Entanet so they process the first card payment and put the order through to Enta to process so theyre not actually an ISP. Freeola forward the direct debit paperwork which is all with Enta and is posted back to Enta with the first line of the address being

Freeola ADSL Activation
Entanet
etc etc

Now it seems Freeola are changing the way they work and bringing the billing "inhouse" and possibly becoming an L2TP partner so they in fact have far more control over connections (L2TP basically means they are renting a fixed bandwidth pipe from Enta and put all their customers onto that instead of onto Entas network directly as we are at present, for anyone who cares to know).

This seems likely as they are now going to be offering lots of lower capped products that Enta do not offer so cant see how they can offer them any other way but thats another story....

Anyway had a letter from Freeola stating that they wish to change the direct debit and that we dont have to do anything as the DD will be amended to pay Freeola instead of Enta.

Now can they actually do this? Is this Enta passing on banking details to Freeola a potential breach of the Data Protection Act?

I'm not too bothered but there are quite a few interested parties that are concerned shall we say and I would like to know the answer whether another company can amend a direct debit without my say so.

[buzby]

Your agreement will allow them to assign and transfer the agreeemnt, so there will be no Data Protection Act issues. However there is nothing stopping you cancelling the DDM saying that our only provide DDM details to firms who have an established trading record, and until they do, you'll pay in advance by cheque. If they don't like that, you might be able to walk away from the original agreement to a main player.

[davethorp]

There appears to be nothing wrong with transferring a direct debit to a new/different billing company. All telewest:NTL direct debits have now been transferred to the new Virgin Media which sounds similar to whats happened to you