[Resolved]  JustDial.com — Canceling/Withdrawing ECS mandate(s) to JustDial.

Before I tell you how to do it, let me clearly state that this information is freely available, and hence you are free to share the following information with your friends, on blogs or anywhere you wish. You are also free to convert this into any language you wish and share it with others. It worries me that most citizen/people never think about researching the present laws/guidelines to find solution to their problems, and fall prey to rampant superstitions or to touts/agents who claim they can fix problems, these things are illogical and would rarely fix your problems. Please learn to be skeptical and research current laws/guidelines. Now, to begin let me state that I had the displeasure of hiring "Justdial" to do marketing for me, the contacts they referred to me hardly ever became paying customers, maybe that is the fault of my business or maybe not, which made me highly skeptical about their methodologies, the names of the people referred to me also sounded quite dubious(fake). And this led me to want to cancel further relations with them. I do not wish to bore you with my sob story so I will end it right here. However, I will tell you how to stop/withdraw/cancel the ECS Mandate that you authored into force. I will advice you to pay strict attention to every detail I mention here, as I will be going quite a bit into simple Law-English. Ok, to have some background, Let me clarify ECS a bit for those of you who don’t know what it means, ECS stands for Electronic Clearing Service, it is used by companies to either receive periodic payments(ECS Debit) from you, for example telephone, electricity bills, etc., automatically through your account or it can be used by companies to pay you(ECS Credit) for example, salaries, dividends, pension, interest, etc. You can already see the requirement & usefulness of ECS here, it allows for bulk transactions to take place without the need for manual labour/hassels. The whole ECS system is developed and governed under the RBI(Reserve Bank of India). You can visit this links and check the FAQ pdf for ECS if you require more Info. http://ecs.rbi.org.in/ So, if you wish to stop the ECS payments to Justdial, you must understand the system used by them to debit your account, I dont know about other states, cities or countries, but here in Mumbai, India, Justdial uses’BillDesk’ to collect payments from my account. Knowing this is very important, I will get into the semantics later, but you must be very sure as to who actually debits your bank account, you can find this in your monthly bank statements, check the entry for the JustDial Debit and you will find their collector. This Collector collects the money from your bank account for Justdial, based on the ECS(Debit) mandate furnished by you to Justdial. So the entirety of the law you need to know is contained in the "Procedural Guidelines – ECS(Debit)" link/pdf located at http://ecs.rbi.org.in/ So, now according to Section 6 clause(iv), sub-clause(d), "Further, on receipt of withdrawal instructions from its customer, it is obligatory on the part of the User institution not to include the transaction pertaining to such customers in the ECS input file, provided the withdrawal instruction is received 15 days prior to the date of submission of ECS file to the NCC / Clearing House. In case a debit record is repeatedly presented despite such withdrawal / non-existence of mandate, for more than three ECS runs, the NCC / Clearing House may consider not entertaining the future ECS runs of that particular User institution.", which means that you need to tell the "User institution"(I will get to who that is later) 15 days prior to your account being debited that you with to withdraw/stop/cancel the ECS mandate, and they should cancel future payments to that effect, it also says that should they fail to cancel the ECS mandate for more than 3 times after reciving the notice from you, NCC(National Clearing Cell) / Clearing House will not entertain future ECS transactions from them. Also, according to Section 6 clause(v), sub-clause(b), "The destination branches can debit their customers’ account only on the basis of the mandates given to them. The account holder / customer is also entitled to withdraw the mandate / ECS Debit instructions from his / her banker without involvement of the User institution. The withdrawal instructions of a customer in such cases would be treated equivalent to a ‘stop payment’ instruction in cheque clearing system. The destination bank branches would provide such withdrawal of mandate information to the Users, on request. Thereafter, the User institution shall stop including the relative transaction in the ECS file, after receipt of such countermanding by the customer.", which means that you can give a written notice/application to your bank, without involving the "User Institution"(I will get into who that is later), and the bank shall then issue a "Stop Payment" order for that ECS Mandate. Now, both this laws/guidelines refer to "User Institution", you might assume that it means’Justdial’ right?, well no and maybe a very little yes, let me explain, according to the "Procedural Guidelines – ECS(Debit)" the term user is defined as "User - Refers to the utility companies, insurance corporations / government departments or any other institution receiving / collecting payments(collection service providers) from a large number of customers / subscribers, under the scheme.", according to this, with reference to Section 6 clause(iv), sub-clause(d), you must notify/inform the "Collection Service Provider" in my case’BillDesk’ to withdraw cancel the ECS mandate before 15 days time of you account being debited. Strange right? I agree, very much indeed. But the guidelines are a bit misleading/ambiguous in defining the term user. So, to sum up the process now, here is what you should do, 1. DO NOT contact Justdial on phone customer service or the online complaint to turn off your ECS, they will probably just spin some yarn about how it cannot be cancelled for a year or so, which is an absolute lie. Also, doing this does not allow you to retain any evidence that a proper ECS mandate cancellation notice has been provided to them. If the matter ever goes to court Justdial would probably just deny of having ever heard from you. You could use email as it is a valid form of proof now, but I suspect they would respond to it. 2. Write a hand-written or typed and printed notice/application to your bank, state the above referred Section 6 clause(v), sub-clause(b), in this letter, and ask your bank to withdraw/cancel any and all past, present, and future ECS debit mandate(s) pertaining to Justdial immediately. And, mail this letter using registered post or speed post, remember to use a mailing service that would provide you with the proof of delivery. If you prefer on hand delivering this letter, be sure you collect a signature, date and stamp on a(xerox/printed) copy of this letter on reception of this letter from anybody in the bank you hand this letter to.(This should be enough to stop the payments, but should probably send the other letters also due to the, ambiguity in the guidelines) 3. Write a hand-written or typed and printed notice/application to the "collection service provider" in my case’Billdesk’, state the above referred Section 6 clause(iv), sub-clause(d), in this letter, and ask the "collection service provider"(’Billdesk’) to withdraw/cancel any and all past, present, and future ECS debit mandate(s) pertaining to Justdial immediately. And, mail this letter using registered post or speed post, remember to use a mailing service that would provide you with the proof of delivery. 4. Write a hand-written or typed and printed notice/application to Justdial, state the above referred Section 6 clause(iv), sub-clause(d), in this letter, and ask Justdial to withdraw/cancel any and all past, present, and future ECS debit mandate(s) immediately. Also, state that you wish to unsubscribe from their site and direct them to remove all references and entries of your business(s), this will avoid them from purposely giving bad ratings to you. And, mail this letter using registered post or speed post, remember to use a mailing service that would provide you with a valid proof of delivery. Well, that is it, if this does end up helping you even just a little, let this be a lesson to you, just as it was a lesson to me to be skeptical of everything and I do mean EVERYTHING. And research everything from all angles, before coming to a judgement on it. Please no thankyous’ or blessings, instead if you wish to pay me back for this, write a letter/email to RBI(Reserve Bank of India) asking to modify or reform the current ECS debit guidelines from their weaker points as evident in this post, as they allow abuse of the ECS(Debit) system from scammers and frauds. Maybe they would listen if enough citizen show the interest in modifying the weaker laws. -LawInformer