[Mr Angry]

This raises several questions.

If you were "in credit" to the tune of £120.00 why did ntl bother raising the Direct Debit

By law NTL must afford you around fourteen days notice of their intent to debit your account. You maintain that you did not receive any prior notice and indeed the billing Dept advised you that you "should have an email address set up to receive (your) bills". From the gist of your posting this suggests that they are unsure as to whether you have or have not done so.

Given that it's rather foolhardy of them to just assume that you have received the advance notification required. In fact I'm amazed they managed to send it to you by email when they themselves can't even ascertain if you have a specific email established for that purpose.

The fact is, however, that the Direct Debit scheme in this scenario affords you little or no protection as, from what I understand from your original post, no monies were paid to NTL.

You will need to deal directly with your bank on the matter of the £30.00 charge. Firstly I would phone your bank to explain the circumstances behind this issue and ask that they refund the £30.00 as a "gesture of goodwill". If they refuse then ask if they will reconsider your request if you can provide them with adequate written proof that the error was not yours but NTL's. If they agree then ask them to write to you stating this and forward that letter, along with a covering letter, to NTL. Obviously it would be better if you already had available to you an admission of sorts from NTL. (Perhaps they could email it to you as a matter of urgency to the email address which you don't have that they supposedly sent your advance billing notification to).

If your bank refuse to budge on either count then advise them that you consider the charge to be a "penalty charge" under common law and that you are quite prepared to go to your local County Court to claim for recovery of that charge and any other such charges which they have levied against your account over the last six years. You can do this, very effectively and at very little cost, online via a site called moneyclaim.

Don't threaten it if you are not prepared to do it though. If you need any more info or advice drop me a pm.