My gym recently debited my account for over R5000, pointing to small print in a contract that had just expired, saying it would renew the contract unless I gave several months' notice. How do a I stop companies abusing debit orders like this? - Joe

Doug Walker, Absa Group Payments managing executive, responds:

Banks offer a service called "stop payment" which can be accessed via Internet banking. This will prevent a debit order being processed for six months, and needs to be renewed every six months.

If the debit-order system is abused - and there is a problem at the moment with fraudsters sending SMSes telling people they have won competitions to get bank details on which they set bogus debit orders - we block them from our system permanently.

Consumers, however, need to be cautious about using the stop-payment service against bona fide services they have contracted for.

Banks are not directly involved in negotiating debit-order agreements. We will, therefore, accept any debit processed against a customer's account, accepting that an agreement exists and that there is recourse to the receiver of the payment or their bank. This also explains why the receiver of the payments must be informed of the cancellation of a debit order.

As an extra precaution, the bank may also be notified of this.

Steps to consider when cancelling debit orders:

• Give written notification to the receiver of the payment. Then there is the stop payment option mentioned above. But it is up to the customer to make sure that the debit order is indeed cancelled;
• Customers must be mindful of any impact that cancelling or suspending a debit order may have on their contractual commitments with the third party; and
• Those customers with disputes about any of their debit orders must report this to the bank in writing, or go to the bank and tell staff the debit order was not approved.

Disputes should be raised when the third party receiving the payment:

• Has withdrawn an amount before the date specified by the customer;
• Has unsuccessfully tried to withdraw the debit order on two consecutive occasions, as the third party must obtain a new instruction from the client;
• Has split the amount to be collected into smaller amounts - for example, splitting R150 into three collections of R50; and
• Continues to collect a debit order that has been cancelled or has a stop-payment instruction.

Absa, as part of its efforts to prevent misuse of the debit order system, has a dispute-handling process.

The cost of this service will be waived if the transaction can be proved to be fraudulent or if there has been proven misuse of the system by the receiving party.