Unauthorised money "given" to payday loan co's by my bank!

[magictorch1976]

Hi everyone

I wonder if you can help me with this nightmare.

Two payday loans – one to Wonga, one to LendingStream.

On the payday loan roundabout – rollover after rollover – nightmare to try and clear with other priority debts at the moment.

Emailed Wonga and LendingStream on 22nd September 2010 instructing them I was revoking their permission to use my card details to collect any form of payment in relation to my account. I advised that by the end of October I would have reviewed my situation, (DMP most likely) and I would contact them then. I of course received nothing back from them.

 

The loans were due on the 28th September so on the 27th September, I spoke to my bank, in a branch and asked what I could do. I was advised the only option to stop a CAT transaction was to cancel my card which I promptly did that evening via telephone banking.

The next day, authorisations were pending on my account to the sum of around £700, which I went nuts about because I couldn’t access any cash for 5 days until these pending transactions dropped off. Once I was back in the black, things I thought were OK.

For some unknown reason, I then received a letter from the Debit Card Fraud Operations department at Barclays, listing the transactions to Wonga and Lending Stream asking me to mark them as genuine or fraudulent. The letter said if I marked them as genuine they would be debited to my account within 14 days or if I didn’t respond, they would also be debited within 14 days so I marked them F for Fraud and sent it back with a letter enclosing copies of the emails I had sent to lending stream and wonga, revoking permission, believing that Wonga and LS had committed fraud by attempting to process my debit card when I had told them not to – surely this is theft?

 

Barclays, in their wisdom have overlooked completely the fact that I had revoked this permission and said that as I had made payments before to these merchants, that the transactions were “within the normal operating parameters of my account” and therefore, they are unable to do anything other than debit the money. The day before I received the letter advising of such, £395 was debited from my account by Barclays and given to Wonga and Lending Stream. I am now £400 overdrawn (with no overdraft facility.)

This beggars belief. I control who has access to my money and when and I am fuming that these cowboys ignored the initial emails from me revoking permission to process the payments but that my bank clearly operates in the favour of the merchant and not the customer by opening a fraud case, when I never requested this and then pushing me into a corner which I now cannot get out of.

How should I pursue this? I am overdrawn at the bank my hundreds of unauthorised pounds thanks to these transaction however this is by their own doing. I was in the process of closing my account with them anyway but this now just compounds the issue.

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

J

[sillygirl1]

The bank are wrong here, you clearly revoked authority yet they allowed it due to 'previous activity'. You now need to go to the police and get a crime no for both companies, they will resist but say the bank have requested you get this information as you can claim on an insurance policy against the accidental overdraft.

 

Then report all parties to the following

 

Office of Fair Trading

Trading Standards

Ministry of Justice

Local MP

 

Then get yourself another bank account, Halifax have a good online one, so do the Co-op.

[ihateyes]

Having work with a bank, the bank would view this as you have bought a chargeable service being a loan. rememebr the likely hood is the bank will send with a lender, as the bank itself is a lender!!!

 

Also remember fraud uis when you have not bought or used a service. in this instance you have, and your email openly admits that. The bank had no option at all but to pay.