I was reading your article about The Money Club debiting its annual subscription charge multiple times with interest. I signed up last July and paid the annual £125 fee.
By chance I discovered they’ve been taking this on a daily basis – that’s £1,000 every eight days. Surprisingly, my bank’s software hadn’t stepped in to protect me from unusual transactions and it’s now stopping the direct debits.
I’m advised £8,000 in all has been taken from my account.
SM, Croydon
Your experience has beaten the previous £6,000 record for unauthorised payments deducted by this shopping club. But I do have to ask – how could you not notice £8,000 leaving your account over January and February?
Equally, how does The Money Club never appear to notice its unexpected enrichment until I alert it? When I first drew its attention to its haywire debiting back in 2014 it blamed a software update from the previous year.
Since then I’ve been contacted by subscribers, many elderly, who’ve been relieved of three- and four-figure sums.
Each time, The Money Club director Graham Knight insists it’s a computer problem. It’s the same now, even though you signed up five years after the alleged computer glitch that started it all.
Knight confirms that 64 payments were removed from your account instead of one and is refunding you it all plus £1,000 in compensation.
It’s not reassuring that he says staff are “looking at” rewriting the computer programme so subscription figures can be regularly checked.
It’s worth knowing that the direct debit guarantee protects customers from erroneous debits and if The Money Club did not refund you, your bank would be obliged to do so.
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