Checking Your Direct Debit Is A Waste Of Time.......

From time to time, I ask the bank to print out for me all my direct debits to see what is going out from my account. I was satisfied that all was well, until I had a strange letter that made no sense, it was addressed to my Husband Paul. It was for Prime TV, I immediately took the letter to the bank and showed it them, It showed that Paul and me as we have a joint account Amazon had been taking out our account from last year June £7.99 on the first of each month to pay for Prime TV.

I said to the Assistant in the bank, “We have never had Prime TV, so how can we be paying for it?”  She looked back into our account and showed me that from June Amazon had taken that amount out our account, she said, “Your Husband must have joined up for it,” I told her, “He didn’t.” She said, “I will fill in from the bank a ‘joined in error form,’ and went on, “You need to contact Amazon to let them know, that it was in error and maybe, just maybe they will give you a refund.” I asked, “Has other people done this too, and got a refund?” She said, “Yes, others have had refund but not all.”

I told her, I am shocked that this hidden direct debit was not shown on my bank account, she said, “It has happened to a lot of People, who have paid for this for many years unaware, that this money is been taken from their accounts, and what has happened is, they have been offered a free subscription for three months and have clicked on “Yes,” then they forget to unsubscribe and they are charged from them on.” I was beyond disgusted. A rich Company like Amazon taking peoples money and they are not aware of it.

I asked Paul to recheck again his Amazon account for any subscriptions he may have joined up to, he checked and could see nothing! For I’d thought it was theft and fraud but the bank Sales Assistant had said, “It was neither that, that Paul had clicked on something and needed to unsubscribed.”

I was hoping to get a refund of all the money that was in my view, stolen from us, but instead Paul got a flipping Prime TV card, saying, “You are not using it, you need to make the most of it and films you are missing out on.” With the now account details on this letter Paul went into his account and unsubscribed to them! He said, “It was not easy, they didn’t make it easy.”

He still insists he didn’t subscribe to them, so check your accounts for as the bank Sales Assistant said, “Amazon has been taking this money out of many peoples account over many years and they do not know it, for it does not show up on their direct debits, or any statements.”

Scary. I won’t be bothering to ask for a refund. Lessons learnt.