As some customers may have noticed, the extra bank holiday at the start of June caused some sifferences to the normal Direct Debit payments. Basically, customers who are normally billed on the 1st but have picked Direct Debit collection on the 9th of the month were not charged for their 1st June invoice on the 9th of June as you might have expected.
The reason for this is that the billing system tries to ensure that you always have the agreed 5 working days notice for an invoice, and that was simply not possible for an invoice on the 1st and Direct Debit on the 9th June, because of the extra bank holiday for the Queen's Jubilee.
The result was that invoices on the 1st June had extended credit terms with payment collect on 9th July rather than 9th June. The invoice you were sent did state the extended credit terms, and the Direct Debit notices sent are all correct. Your invoice is not paid late because of this, it is extra credit we are giving you. You will get a further Direct Debit notice for your July 1st invoice to be collected on 9th July.
This only affects some customers with specific billing cycle and direct debit date selection. As per consumer credit rules I can confirm this was 0.0% APR interest for the extra month's credit.
Whilst an extra bank holiday like this is rare, it is possible for an Easter to cause the same problem in teh future, so we have made some changes. Customers asking to have Direct Debit collections on a specific date, such as the 9th, will now find that it can be collected up to 3 working days after the date agreed. This is consistent with Direct Debit rules which allow 3 working days after the notified collection date. We will normally aim to collect on the agreed date or the next working day as now, but invoices due very close to the collection date could have the collection delayed like this to allow for the agreed 5 working days notice.
I appreciate this is give some customers an extra month's interest free credit on their bill, which is a tad unfair to other customers. and that even those that have benefitted from this may find the payment collections confusion. Hopefully this will not happen in the future.