Despite several letters and requests, some telephone operators may continue to make withdrawals from your account.
Imagine the situation: while you are doing your accounts and going through your various bills and expenses, you find strange direct debits coming from a company you don’t know. Regular direct debits with different amounts each time. You then send them a letter, but nothing works, you even receive bills at home.
This story happened to Marie-Pierre in 2022. The young woman recently spoke about it to UFC-Que-Choisir to share her misadventure: after the death of her grandfather, she discovered different telephone subscriptions for the company Monatel. A telephone operator whose name frequently comes up for abuse and sending unpaid bills.
And for good reason: Monatel is one of those companies that were caught out a few years ago for having elderly people take out several telephone subscriptions who did not need them, were under guardianship or suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While Monatel is the operator that comes up most often in this type of affair, other names are also cited such as Resofix, E Télécom or One Two Tel. Companies most often based outside France and therefore difficult to contact.
Several affected people have, in the past, tried to contact the said operators by telephone to stop the direct debits, but without success. This is followed by several months of direct debits that you can sometimes miss if you forget the subscriptions taken out by you or one of your elders. It is then advisable to send a termination letter as soon as possible to put an end to it.
But as UFC-Que-Choisir has noted, these termination letters often go unanswered by the operators in question, who continue to make withdrawals from your account or that of your parent: “the levies had been going on since at least 2017 (…) at a rate of 10 to 40 € per month, my grandfather was robbed of several thousand euros”, Marie-Pierre tells the UFC.
Our advice (and that of UFC-Que-Choisir) remains to block the direct debits if they continue despite your termination letter. However, check beforehand whether you have a commitment to the operator in question.