Howdy, I am not sure if speaking to your bank is going to help much because of the way the push debit payment system works in SA. Essentially, when you sign a debit mandate against you account (or they even record you telephonically stating that they can collect payment from your account ) you give the 3rd party (merchant) the right to pretty much do what they want ( within a monthly maximum amount, if specified). Your bank is not going to refund you because unlike other countries we don't have a direct debit guarantee system in place between the banks and in effect it is therefore not their problem. Banks generally dislike direct debit because they make less money out of it then with other EFT transactions - with push debit the bank that makes the money is the one the receives (acquires) the transaction from the merchant - which is given to them either directly by the merchant (OAR) or via an independent Payment Service Provider such as Netcash, CASHFOCUS (ABSA) etc.
Going to the police will also not help because it would be a civil matter - even though it seems like a criminal one. Stopping abuse of the push debit payment system requires 2 steps - (1) to stop your account being debited going forward, and (2) to recover the money already collected, either by contacting the merchant or if need be going the legal route with them. The best way forward is to make a fuss with either the orinating bank or Payment Service Provider that acquires the transaction. You can usually establish this by looking at the debit transaction.and seeing the name of the Payment Service Provider. If you can't establish this yourself then give it to me and i will try to find out who it is so you can then complain to them about OAR abusing the debit payment system - hopefully they will then cut their water off when they have consumers complain. My strong advice is never ever sign debit orders or agree verbally to have your account debited, especially by smaller companies because they can then do what they want and your bank will not help you. Regards Toby On Nov 3, 4:07 pm, Daniel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone! > > Since I'm a Swedish citizen and not too familiar with the SA law > enforcement and that I have noticed that not only I have been tricked > by these fraudsters, perhaps someone would want to share some advice > on how to go about filing a report with the Woodstock Police. > OAR have kept on debiting my account, and since they have been very > friendly all the time I thought they would pay me back my money. 5 > months have passed now and they owe me a nice little amount of money. > An SA friend of mine have been calling them, emailing them and so have > I, to no success. > > Who is in? What should I keep in mind? Who do I speak to at Woodstock > Police stasie? > > Groete > Daniel, Salt River (Stockholm for the time being) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Observatory Neighbourhood watch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/obsnw?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
