Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Georgia

I think I know what happened here. First, never let someone else use your debit card to pay their bill or buy something. If you want to help another, find an ATM, take out the money and give it to them. If they are going to pay you back, do a loan agreement specifying how much will be paid and when. Don't do what you did.

My experience has been that when you allow a debit card to be used to pay a bill (could be utility or maybe somethning else), the company stores that information on file and uses it the next time around. Your card then gets hit again and you have to fight to get your own money back. Even worse, you get none of the protections afforded to real credit cards and by using a debit card that money immediately comes out of your bank account. If unexpected charges hit at the same time you make payments, you could end up bouncing checks all over the place and incurring unnecessary fees.

What you need to do is go to your bank first thing tomorrow morning and CANCEL this debit card since you were foolish with it. You need to see if there were any unauthorized charges to your card. If so, then you need to dispute this immediately in writing with your bank as you only authorized a one-time draft. The laws only give you a limited time to dispute this. If you are outside the timeframe, then you still need to shut down this card immediately. You will then have to write to the utility or other company and request a refund. Advise they were not authorized to make added charges, send them a copyy of your bank statement, advise that your bank will not help and ask for a refund of whatever they took. They will not pay any bounced check or other fees charged by your bank. I know you do not want to hear this, but the company and your bank looks at this as being your fault for being stupid and using your card like this. They are not liable for your mistakes.

So the short answer is yes, yes they can. The way to stop this is to NEVER NEVER NEVER use your debit card to pay someone else's or your own bill. Use the debit card to buy gas or groceries or one-time purchases of goods.