Contact your bank without delay and tell them.

I would assume that payment was made under a variable direct debit and you are protected by the code of practice.

fwh

that is absolutely outragous Kim how the hell can it not be their fault

We did contact the bank (Abbey) & they said anything paid on a debit card is guaranteed for payment, so they pay FIRST & then you query later!!!!
Well now we are querying & First Choice are denying calling for payment!!!!!!!!!

are they claiming they dont have your money Kim

How are your bank charges £1000?

I'm not sure, I think they are suggesting that the firm that deals with their card transactions COULDN'T have made any mistakes, I will copy & paste email.....

I need to obtain proof that your credit card or bank account was debited in
June 2006, for the delayed February transaction and again in June 2007.
At this stage I cannot establish why this has occurred until I have more
information. A transaction is usually debited when a "file" with the
transaction details is passed to the card issuer, we have not submitted a
file since June 2006 with this information. At this stage I believe this
has not happened from our end. It is highly unusual for this type of error
to occur.

The authorisation code is not something the customer sees, this works like
an identification number for the transaction.
I will be happy to go through some of the transactional data with your
bank, due to data protection, this can only be done if you authorise the
bank to discuss this with me.

I did a search on our system for the card number ending 5356, which your
husband holds and this has not been used.

I will try and resolve as much of this today as I can for you,
unfortunately today is my last day at First Choice. I have updated my
manager with all of the details relating to this issue and she will ensure
this is resolved to a satisfactory conclusion.

On the matter of your bank charges, I can't believe your bank want to
charge yet another £10.00 when they have already charged you for a
transaction you did not authorise them to take.

What do you think?

For an example of how STUPID they are, on Wednesday I brought the bank statements SHOWING the £807.40 debit, they photo copied it. Now they say they want to "see" it.

They confirmed to me the date of the June payment, I didn't know when it was, now they want me to pay for statements to "prove" it.

As for the card number, the card number I provided them as I told they AGAIN & AGAIN, WILL NOT show any transaction. It wasn't made on this present card, it was made on the old one, which is expired, so I can't give them the number as I don't know it.

The debit shows as 4th June, but the bank rang me on 27th June to tell me that First Choice were calling a debit on an expired card?????????? I told the bank NOT to pay it, but they did.

The bank charges are there because we didn't know over £800 was taken from our account, UNTIL the bank charge letters started rolling in.

The bank seem to have adjusted the payment BACK to 4th June 07 & charged us £20 for everyday overdrawn & £30 for every bounce. It adds up quickly.

maybe you should be having issues with your bank too, if you have advised them not to let a payment come from a expired card then im sure i would be complaining to them to

We tried that & they said they HAD to pay every debit card transaction.

I don't know where to turn?

I agree, the actions of the bank seem very unreasonable as well. Which bank is it?

The Abbey

Again I say talk to the bank. Opinions, and that is all they are on here will not help resolve your problem.

You need to speak to a manager. Perhaps you should raise the question of it being a possible fr a u d u lent request for this money. That usually gets them moving.

fwh

I suggest getting in touch with The Guardian newspaper money supplement: http://money.guardian.co.uk/

or of you don't like the Guardian a similar organisation. They tend to get things like this sorted out pretty quickly and publish the story too.

You may also get some very useful information from here:
http://www.bankingcode.org.uk/
It should be noted that they have a Help Desk and so you can call them and get immediate advice.

Have you been in touch with someone in head office. No disrespect to anyone who works in a bank but sometimes the 'counter' staff have been trained to answer certain questions in a certain way and they will not deviate from that. Therefore being of no help whatsoever.

The first thing I would ask is WHY they have authorised a transaction on an expired card. If you had tried to use the expired card in a shop would they have authorised that - I think not.

If I were you I would tell them that you want all monies that they have authorised on this expired card paid back into your account forthwith along with all bank charges that you have incurred due to their incompetance and unless it is done within a time frame that you specify
then you will have no option but to seek legal advice and pass any incurred charged to them for full payment.

Personally I wouln't leave the bank until I got some satisfaction however long it took. While they are fobbing you of it is YOU that are incurring more charges

Not only was it expired, but we have a £1,000 overdraft facility. At the time of the transaction, we were £500 overdrawn. By paying out this £800+ this put us £300+ OVER our agreed overdraft limit.
Now had this been ANY other transaction they would have bounced it without question. Infact it happened twice last month (probably for the first time in years, we are a bit strapped & don't need this at the moment) & had they paid it we would have been a tiny bit over the £1,000, but no they bounced it, so why pay this out??????

Again I say talk to the bank. Opinions, and that is all they are on here will not help resolve your problem.

You need to speak to a manager. Perhaps you should raise the question of it being a possible fr a u d u lent request for this money. That usually gets them moving.

fwh

I agree with fwh, you need to see the manager to get this sorted out as soon as possible, or the charges will just keep mounting.

Peter

Another odd thing.
Its dated as 4th June 07 on the statement, BUT sandwiched between two transactions that happened on 2nd July 07.

Now you might think thats just a printing error. They told us about this First Choice trying to take £800+ on the 27th June, we told them NOT to pay it as it must be a mistake as we had had that holiday the previous year & not ordered any more First Choice holidays.

We contacted First Choice who claimed NOT to know anything about it & said it was nothing to do with them?, their accounts department rang the next day (the 29th July) to again confirm it wasn't First Choice.

Now silly us we assumed that as we had forbid our bank to pay & First Choice said we didn't owe it then all was OK, WRONG.

About two week later we start getting letters from the bank bouncing direct debits in every direction.

Now I think they paid the money out on the 2 July 07, as this is the date range that the transactions are slotted between. But when we recieved the statement, they BACKDATED the payment to the 4th June, but still show it on the statement as between 2th July & have adjusted our account to show us as over our overdraft since 4th June, thereby our bank charges are huge, nearly £1,000 & growing daily.

God, when I write it out here, it sounds really fishy what they are doing, doesn't it.
Why backdate it nearly a month?

This is a horrid situation to be put in through no fault of your own. Maybe you could try the Citizens Advice for help. Banks have been getting terrible publicity over their unfair charges in the papers at the moment.

I know that there is a form you can fill in online to claim back unfair charges and the interest on it. Maybe you could threaten the Abby with this. Good luck.