Beware of who has your Credit Card Details!

One of our clients had recently made contact with us to notify us of the following: -

1. That she had a contract with MyRepublic, a multinational Internet company, in 2018.
2. She requested the contract to be terminated in December 2018.
3. She then received an invoice in June 2019, requesting her to attend to the payment for apparent services provided by MyRepublic from January through to June 2019. Of course, the client was most upset and made contact with them, requesting them to have the invoice written off.
4. However, no appropriate or relevant person from MyRepublic was helpful in any way, and she was unable to speak to an appropriate person who could in fact address her concern.
5. MyRepublic then proceeded to direct debit the payment without addressing our client’s issues raised and without her authority as they had kept her credit card details on their system’s records when she was still contracted with their company.
6. Accordingly, she was also worried whether any future payments would in fact be direct debited further. To prevent future payments from being debited, our client then had to proceed to contact her banking institution in order to terminate her credit card.
7. However, despite further numerous attempts to make contact with MyRepublic and even having been falsely assured that a refund would in fact be processed for the payment, no money was returned to our client.

Subsequent to obtaining legal representation, MyRepublic was forced to respond. When threatened, intimidated and notified the matter would be escalated to a Telecommunications Ombudsman, a response was finally obtained. They had no valid response to provide as to why an invoice was issued 6 months after the contract was repudiated by our client.

This is a clear situation where false representations were made to a customer on various occasions and where a transaction was fraudulently made to her credit card details that was still on system’s records.

After numerous correspondences and strenuous threats being raised against MyRepublic, they finally conceded to the fact that the money was wrongly direct debited and agreed to refund it. Contrarily, their policy was such that it would only be direct debited to the nominated bank account when advised.

Further, when our firm advised MyRepublic that the card had been cancelled and that our client did not hold a valid account with that specific entity, they said they had no choice but to make a refund to that particular entity, and our client had to proceed to make contact with them to have that transaction followed through! Obviously, concerns and headaches for our client continued.

After much hassle and further inordinate steps, our client was only able to recover the payment from MyRepublic after 6 months and legal costs being incurred!

This is most unprofessional, and accordingly, kindly ensure that any company that has your direct debit contact details are notified in writing of the following: -

1. When your contract needs to be terminated, kindly put them on Notice via writing.
2. Kindly ensure that they are also notified in writing that direct debits are to be cancelled.
3. If a payment has been illegally processed, ensure that you follow it through rather than letting these multinational corporations embezzle moneys from you without appropriate authority.

If you believe you have exhausted your communication efforts with any company, contact Freedman & Gopalan Solicitors on 02 8917 8700 in order to obtain advice and retain our services to recover your debt!