I have an 18 year old daughter who suffers from autistic spectrum disorter and she is unable to fill out forms because of her poor understanding, reading and spelling abilities. She happen to hell me that her online banking was showing she was overdrawn by £14 and she didn't understand why. At first I thought she had somehow used her debit card which had enabled her to become overdrawn in someway.
After looking at her account it was actually bank charges which had made her overdrawn so I asked her to show me any bank letters she may have received. She is not very good at reading and just files her bank statements and letter so she showed me 2 bank letters she had received because she had not enough funds in her account to pay 2 direct debits for Loanfinder uk and Credit Xtra.
I was absolutely horrified and questioned her at length asking if she had attempted to get any loans and she didn't even know what I was talking about. She may be 18yrs old now but she cannot even spell her own address never mind filling in an online form!
I spent ages trying to get through to her bank who put an instant stop on any more direct debits but advised us to go into our local branch and open a new bank account, which we did. But the bank cancelled her debit card and are re-issueing her with a new one with a new pin number but could not give us an appointment for a couple of weeks time to get her a new bank account. They did however give us the telephone number of the company which happens to cover both the direct debit attempts from her account. They did reimburse her overdraft charges as well.
I phoned the company but it was an automated service and could not get through to anybody and so found an online email address and did eventually get through to somebody who did phone me. He told me that somebody had filled an online form in for a loan and that the charges made to the account where for there services for searching for a loan - they were actually very helpful when I explained about my daughter's special needs. He said they would not pursue her account for any more charges.
We still are proceeding with changing my daughters bank account which I'm fuming about the length of time this is taking and am still unsure whether somebody has filled some kind of online form and given her bank details because how else could they have got them because it only takes somebody to look at the details on her debit card to use these details to do something like this. There should be some system that stops company's having access to bank accounts through direct debits without the bank owners consent!!!
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