Update on direct debit payments

The National Trust for Scotland has been undertaking a major project to modernise and enhance our IT system.

Unfortunately, while this has been going on, there have been problems affecting a small proportion of the Trust’s membership.

Of those who choose to pay their membership subscription by direct debit, a limited number had experienced system errors which led to either the wrong amount being deducted from their accounts or the direct debits being taken on the wrong day. Some have also received letters with out-of-date contact details.

To give our contractors space to resolve these problems, we decided to suspend direct debit payments for a short period.

These payments have now restarted this month (November). Members may notice that payments have been taken two days earlier than planned. This was due to a human error and not connected to the system switchover.

The Trust’s Director of Customer & Cause, Mark Bishop said:

“The new system will ultimately enable the Trust’s members to personalise the information and benefits they receive, and quickly and easily change contact details and undertake renewals.

“This is a big project, involving millions of lines of code being re-written and the details of over 370,000 members being transferred from old systems to the new. Inevitably, as with most IT projects of this scale, there have been teething problems.

“Our contractors have been working on this and we have now restarted direct debits.

“Unfortunately, these payments have been taken two days earlier than planned. This is due to human error, and we are very sorry for any inconvenience caused. We have reviewed our processes and training to ensure that this issue doesn’t occur again.

“If anyone has incurred any charges because of this, we will, of course, cover those. Please email information@nts.org.uk with details, and confirmation of charges from your bank.

“We understand that this is far from ideal and want to thank our members and donors for their understanding and for continuing to support our charity and the work we do to protect Scotland’s special places.”