“They continue to charge you even after you have cancelled”, UFC warns against these telephone operators

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 withdrawals coming from a company you don't know. Regular withdrawals 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 this subject to UFC-Que-Choisir to share her misadventure: after the death of her grandfather, the latter discovered different telephone subscriptions for the Monatel company. A telephone operator whose name comes up frequently for abuses and sending unpaid bills.

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And for good reason: Monatel is one of those companies that was caught out a few years ago by having elderly people take out several telephone subscriptions when they did not need them, were under guardianship or suffered from Alzheimer's disease. While Monatel is the operator that comes up most often in this type of case, 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 people affected 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 them.

But as noted UFC-Que-Choisir, these termination letters often go unanswered by the operators being singled out, who continue to make withdrawals from your account or that of your parent: “the withdrawals have been going on since at least 2017 (…) at a rate of 10 to 40  euro; per month, my grandfather had several thousand euros stolen from him,” says Marie-Pierre at the UFC.

Our advice (and that of the UFC-Que-Choisir) is to block the direct debits if they continue despite your termination letter. Please check beforehand whether you have a contract with the operator in question.