A small number customers with regular payments of Direct Debits on the 9th of each month have, this month, had a collection going through on the 2nd and not the 9th. This is not in accordance with the notice previously given for the regular amount as it stated the 9th. Obviously this is wrong and we do apologise for any inconvenience caused. We have re-written the whole of our Direct Debit system from scratch this month, and this is the only issues that has come to light. We have already made changes to ensure this does not happen again.
Under the scheme rules customers are entitled to reclaim the Direct Debit from their bank as not having had correct notice. Normally bouncing or reclaiming a Direct Debit would incur an admin fee, but our accounts department have been instructed to cancel these as it is our mistake. Anyone doing this will have to ensure they do pay by the 9th though, so it is unlikely to be sensible for people to do a claw back the payment and then send it back to us a few days later. We understand some people may, however, bounce the payment or have insufficient funds on the 2nd. Customers that have incurred any loss as a result of this, such as bank charges, should contact the accounts department.
Once again, sorry for any inconvenience.
P.S. Part of the rework meant writing a specification for how the DDs are collected, and customers may find this useful. http://aa.net.uk/legal-dd.html
We have cleared all records of "regular" payment notifications from the system and added new checks in place to ensure we track these better in future. This means that your next DD collection will have 5 working days notice. This will then re-establish regular payments for those that pay the same each month.
Once again, sorry for any inconvenience.
We have notified the affected customers individually now.