Reports of South Hams residents being charged twice for their weekly rent has spurred interest and a throwback to a similar occurrence in September.

An individual from Kellaton who wishes to remain anonymous has informed us of the issue after being charged twice in one week for one weeks rent, earlier in December. While ringing up DCH Tenants to complain, they learnt that this instance was not a singular occurrence as other customers were experiencing the problem.

However, DCH use Allpay, a business that provides bill payment services as a third party organisation to collect the rent from their customers, meaning that DCH played no part in this discrepancy.

According to the affected resident in Kellaton, others had rung DCH to complain last week and admitted to having similar rent errors in September.

Half a day after noticing the discrepancy and five phone calls later, the individual received his Direct Debit Guarantee refund.

He added: “When you have little money in the bank it is quite concerning that DCH third party rent collectors can just collect double the rent”.

Allpay, the third party rent collectors in question have responded saying that they apologise for any “inconvenience caused" to their customers who had their Direct Debit payments duplicated.

The organisation have blamed the discrepancy on a “system error” and have confirmed that customers have been refunded to ensure that “nobody is left out of pocket.”

Further to this, Allpay have affirmed that an “unrelated system error” also occurred in September. A spokesperson for the company has said: “This is an unacceptable system glitch and we will do everything possible to ensure it doesn’t happen again”.