You should have already arranged to setup a Standing Order for your regular rental payments by completing and signing a Standing Order Form when you signed the Tenancy Agreement.
A Standing Order Authorisation is NOT a Direct Debit Mandate.
A Direct Debit would involve you giving us your bank details and permission to take money from your account on our own authority (we would be able to decide how much and on what dates we took the money from you). THIS IS NOT WHAT WE DO.
We use Standing Orders, which are very different.
A Standing Order is a signed order from you to your own bank requesting that your own bank SENDS us specified amounts of money on specified dates under your own authority alone. We have nothing whatsoever to do with the setting-up of this order or its maintenance or cancellation.
Sam Properties: All Sam Properties does is provide you with the form with the payment amounts and dates stated on it for you to add your bank account details and signature and then we provide the form to your bank. That is the end of our involvement.
Your Bank: As the Standing Order is a private order from you to your own bank, once it is out of our hands your bank will (quite rightly!) refuse to speak to us about it as that would mean them breaking Data Protection Laws to discuss your personal banking details with us.
Your Responsibility: Once the form is out of our hands we have no ability or power to check on it. We have no power or ability to check that it has been setup by your bank. We have no power or ability to check whether your bank have set it up correctly. We have no power to alter, amend, change or cancel the Standing Order in any way once the form has left our possession.
It is your responsibility as the Tenant and as the bank account holder to check with your bank to ensure that they have setup the Standing Order correctly in time for the first payment and that they have taken account of any months where Rent should not be paid or where the Payment Amount is different to the Usual Amount due to an agreement between you and the Landlord.
The Tenancy Agreement: As Stated in the Tenancy Agreement all our Tenants sign, if you do not carry out your responsibility to check that you bank have setup your Standing Order correctly and you underpay or overpay your rent you may be liable for charges as follows:
6.6 Other charges
Without prejudice to any other right or remedy of the Landlord:
6.6.1 Where the Rent is not paid within seven days on which payment is due the Tenant shall pay a late payment fee of £10 whether formally demanded or not
6.6.2 Where the Landlord or its agent sends a letter to the Tenant or the Guarantor concerning any breach by the Tenant of its obligations under this Agreement the Tenant shall pay to the Landlord a fixed fee of £20
6.6.8 Where the Landlord or Agent reimburses overpaid rent due to error made by the Tenant or its bank the Tenant shall pay to the Agent a fee of £20