Hello all, I hope someone can advise me on this situation. My direct debit agreement with TalkTalk has been for my phone and broadband account. At the outset it was agreed that payment would be on the 7th of the month, mainly because I am paid on the last day of the month. All was OK until March this year when I received a bank statement which showed that they had taken my payment on 2nd March(not a problem) and another one on the 29th March which was returned due to lack of funds. This resulted in my incurring a £15-00 charge from my bank. I was under the impression that I should be notified in advance of any proposed change to the agreement. Any ideas?

I was going through my bank statement on-line to day and spotted Direct Debit (DD) had been taken a few days ago for the amount of £20.00! Now this was my company account and I only have 3 DD on this and I know them well and none should have been for £20.00. The info shown was LV LIFE with a reference number next to it. I called the bank to find out what it was! I was told that it was a DD that had been set up with out the need for a signature and had been set up to take £20.00 every month for Life Insurance. I asked how this was possible as I had not instructed this DD. I was told that as the set up had been made by the Insurance company using a method that did not require a signature the bank could do nothing to stop it being set up! I told my bank that we had no dealings with LV LIFE ( Liverpool Victoria Insurance) and had never instructed them or provided them with our account details and instructed them to cancel the DD and reclaim the payment. I'm happy to report that the bank did this immediately. However what is concerning is that this was ever allowed in the first place! Also the bank stated that other than cancelling the DD they could not investigate any further. They said I would need to contact the company to find out why the DD had been set up. I explained that we had no dealings with LV LIFE and would not know who to contact but the bank was insistent that we would need to contact them! I was not happy with this and asked for the complaint to be raised with the banks fraud section which they said they would and I'm waiting to be contacted by them. Just thought that this might be useful as a warning to others to check there bank statements as apparently any company can set up a direct debit on your account without having to tell you and the banks just accept this and payout! If you don't spot it and cancel it you lose your money so be careful.