gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) (05/09/85)
It looks like I'm headed for a battle in small claims court, so I thought I'd
ask you netters if you think my position is reasonable ...
Several years ago, when I bought new life insurance, I signed an authorization
to allow the insurance company to deduct a monthly premium from my checking
account at my credit union. This has gone smoothly. Recently I decided to
change carriers, and the agent (who represented both carriers) told me to
issue a "stop payment" order on the monthly deduction to cancel the old policy.
This appears to be the most common way to do it, and indeed it is how I had
canceled the previous policy years ago, when the payments were being deducted
from my bank checking account.
I dropped in at the credit union one lunch time and ended up with a new teller
who did not know how to do it (stop payment on an automatic deduction). He
asked the supervisor, who said that it could not be done -- I had to contact
the insurance company and tell them to stop submitting them. It didn't sound
right to me at the time, but three other people were waiting in the car in the
parking lot, so I didn't stay around to argue.
After thinking about it, I wrote to them that night, pointing out that there
had to be a misunderstanding somewhere, since they were telling me, in effect,
that they were going to give somebody money out of my account even after I had
informed them that such a withdrawl was no longer authorized. Three weeks
later, I received my letter back from them with a handwritten notice that,
since I had authorized the deduction through the insurance company, I had to
stop it through them, too.
I wrote to ask for a written statement from an officer to the effect that, even
though I had canceled the authorization to give my money to this insurance
company, they intended to continue doing so against my wishes. I have not yet
received an answer, but they did deduct last month's payment, after having
received my letter telling them not to do so.
Am I right to believe that I can now go to small claims court and get the
amount they "stole" from my account? Am I missing something significant that
makes their position reasonable? I have notified them, in writing, that the
amount shown as a deduction on my most recent statement is an error, and asking
them to restore it to my account. Hopefully, their answer to that request or
my earlier request for a written statement of their intent to ignore my
cancellation of the automatic deduction authorization would be all the evidence
I need, wouldn't it?
FROM: Brian G. Gordon, CAE Systems
UUCP: {ihnp4, decvax!decwrl}!amd!cae780!gordon
{nsc, resonex, qubix, hplabs, leadsv, teklds}!cae780!gordon davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) (05/11/85)
In article <835@cae780.UUCP> gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) writes: >It looks like I'm headed for a battle in small claims court, so I thought I'd >ask you netters if you think my position is reasonable ... > It seems to me there is a somewhat simple solution here. Simply terminate the checking account and start another. As I understand things, the request from any outside source for money MUST include the proper account number along with a copy of your signiture. Once you have no such account they are helpless to collect anything. Dave Trissel {ihnp4,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet
9234dwz@houxf.UUCP (T.SIEFRING) (05/13/85)
Stopping an automatic payment is very easy, simply
demand that the bank no longer makes the payment.
You did that you say ?
Well in that case you are probably dealing NOT with
an automatic payment but with a DIRECT DEBIT. This
is an instrument whereby YOU have authorized someone
to deduct monies from your account for a period of
time. To stop this you must contact the person that
is presenting the debit to your account. It's kind of
like issuing them an unlimited number of cheques for
a certain amount of time. The bank can't stop the
person presenting the request for money although I
think they should have at the very least told you
how to stop the process. From your original posting
it wasn't really that apparent that they did or
didn't.
More companies are using direct debit than automatic
payment, because they are in control of the request
for your monies and are not reliant upon YOUR bank
to either let them know you don't have funds or to
send the money to them.
Dave Peak
@ !hotel!dxp
"I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you fire" - CWoA Brownmike@enmasse.UUCP (Mike Schloss) (05/14/85)
> In article <835@cae780.UUCP> gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) writes: > >It looks like I'm headed for a battle in small claims court, so I thought I'd > >ask you netters if you think my position is reasonable ... > > > > It seems to me there is a somewhat simple solution here. Simply terminate > the checking account and start another. I would go one step better. Simply terminate the checking account and start another at another bank. Last time I had a similar problem, just threatening to do this was enough.
ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (05/15/85)
> > In article <835@cae780.UUCP> gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) writes: > > >It looks like I'm headed for a battle in small claims court, so I thought I'd > > >ask you netters if you think my position is reasonable ... > > > > > > > It seems to me there is a somewhat simple solution here. Simply terminate > > the checking account and start another. > > I would go one step better. Simply terminate the checking account and > start another at another bank. Last time I had a similar problem, just > threatening to do this was enough. Any reasonable bank would help you in stopping the payments, even if the request legally did have to come from the insurance company. My current banks do. I've closed my accounts at unreasonable banks before (once in Baltimore) and the threat of me leaving straightened out another unreasonable bank (in Denver). -Ron