Is this legal?

God. I'll watch this one with interest. Sorry Soapy, I don't know the answer but I'm really hoping someone else tells you that the answer is no.

I would suggest getting in touch with Trading Standards or Ofcom - the regulators for broadband / TV / phone service providers.

It would all depend on the terms of the contract.
What do they claim to be the authority to use the credit card details?

For that sort of money it is wise you to work it out yourself if possible. Good advice is expensive and cheap advice could cost a lot more than you pay for it.

If the Regulators were worth their salt this sort of thing would not be happening to start with.

If the Regulators were worth their salt this sort of thing would not be happening to start with.

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That might be true - but they can't correct every customer issue unless you get in touch with them and tell them about it.

There is always going to be exceptions where things go wrong and no regulator is going to be able to make sure every customer-provider relationship is perfect.

But the regulators have lines of communication open for a reason - so that customers who feel mistreated can get in touch with them to try and rectify the situation.

Ofcom don't charge you for complaining about your service provider and would offer good free advice, along with Trading Standards too.

When a dispute is complex, my worry would exactly be that they can't correct every customer issue unless you get in touch with them and tell them about it.

If this was the problem with Sky to start with, the difficulty of getting in touch with to tell, the introduction of another factor is not so likely to simplify.

If you have been struggling to get this resolved yourself and have got nowhere then your local Trading Standards should help or Consumer Direct for free.

Should anybody ever manage to get a straightforward answer from Consumer Direct or Trading Standards, to an "is it legal?" sort of question I shall be interested to study the details to see how it went!

In my experience, the more that a question would pin them down to a specific reply the more they disclaim to the effect that their advice is not supposed to be legal advice. Otherwise their advice is to consult a qualified solicitor.

If it's more a matter of enforcement, a complaint to be made a about a payment issue I would rather expect them to pass the buck to the FSA, whose complaint procedures are notoriously long winded.

The problem with all the advice agencies, simply put, is that they're not looking for the extra work. Commercial companies, on the other hand, do look for customers, so their incentive to satisfy is that much greater, not less, than the advice agencies.

This is an off the wall suggestion, but is there a direct competitor to Sky on the patch? If so, I'd expect them to be keen to give a pointer, as to how to give the competitor a run for the money, so to speak.

IMO ISP's are all very bad when I comes to bills and taking money when they are not meant to.

I think I'm about to get in the **** with BT soon as we have just changed to sky because BT aint giving us what we was told we would get (internet speed is poor, keeps cutting out, tv has hardly no channels, tv keeps jumpping (neven did before BT), not as many movies or music as we was told we would have). So we have phones sky and are having them change us over and have stop our DD, but I think you also have to contact your bank to tell them not to let them take any more money unless you approve it, and then if its taken from your bank its not legal as you have instructed the bank not to give them payments (this option may end up with charges if your in the wrong).