Chiclanagir

I am with Banca March but got so fed up with their charges including 15 euros for a Currencies Direct payment, which to be fair CD refunded me, that I decided to change. I now bank with La Caixa and they have been fantastic. No charges at all. When a charge appears it gets refunded immediately. All DD´s are being dealt with by La Caixa so don´t have to do anything.

ForHotspot

It was from Canadian $ to euro & the rate was good at that time. It was Moneycorp who did the exchange.

Michael74

A while back now whilst checking my online account with Barclays here in Spain I saw a direct debit to an insurance company that certainly wasn't mine. After some puzzling about this I realised that it was the exact duplicate of a cheque that I wrote a year ago for a friends insurance premium to this company. He was in UK at the time and is not permantly resident here but does own property here.

I wrote the cheque out in euros as at the time as he did not have enough euros in his account to pay the amount. He reimbursed me by paying the money into my Barclays UK account.

The point of this is that this insurance company raised a direct debit 12 months later for the premium from my account using my account number and information purely from the cheque that I had sent them.

Well, you can imagine, I really had a go at my Spanish Barclays bank wanting to know how a debit could be raised against my account without my permission in any shape or form.

I was informed that this is perfectly legal in Spain and it was up to me to advise my bank as soon as I found out and my bank would reimburse me. So what happens if I didn't pick it up by checking my balance I asked. So after the proverbial shrug of the shoulders I eventually got a promise that a note would be put on my account should it happen again.

Fortunately my friend got in touch with the insurance company and insisted that this should not happen again.

I'm not holding my breath - but next November I shall be watching my balance like a hawk.

As a sub note to this - Has anyone changed from one bank to another in Spain and how easy is it with regard to direct debits and deposits etc.?

johncar61

Michael you were lucky that your friend had not cancelled his policy and that the broker was not Knight's, or you would have paid for a year's insurance that had been cancelled and Knights would not have refunded you a penny. Just like in my case.

Michael74

johncar61, sorry to hear that but did your bank not offer to refund you. What gets me is that its perfectly legal for them to do that. I got the impression from my bank manager that if it was brought to their attention within a certain amount of time they would refund it

I am not one of those that say "it doesn't happen like this in the UK" cos while in Spain etc. but it can be frustrating when money is concerned

johncar61

Michael, I explained what happened when I started this thread, Its too complicated to repeat it here, please see the thread starter,

Regards John

scampicat

I found this too, we wrote a cheque out for some car insurance and the folowing year it wa taken automatically from the Bank. I have had this happen twice in fact.

One was from Knight Insurance who would not let me 'cancel' a policy I no longer required (although once I changed the wording from 'cancel' to 'not renew' I was let off the hook). I had already cancelled the invoice at the bank.

The other was from Linea Directa who took nearly 500 euros from our account for the car insurance we had paid by cheque the year before. It left us with about ten euros in the account! I rang them and said I didn't want the money to come from this account as I was going to pay from elsewhere and they re-imbursed it. Since then, every year they have rung us around the time of renewal and asked how we want to pay. (Good customer service there, credit where it is due).

I actually was quite shocked and amazed to find that they can just take money from your account without your permission. Surely this must be against the law?? And if not it should be, Spain is no longer under Franco's regime.

(ETA, we never keep much in the account now, for that reason. If it is not there, they can't take it....can they?)

scampicat

Just to add that following from the above posts, I can quite understand why up until recently that there was a lot going on in the Black Economy. If insurance companies and the like can just take your money without asking, then that is nothing short of theft and I for one don't blame anyone who keeps their money under the mattress and deals entirely in cash.


(ETA: I'm not saying we do this! )