Do I now go the Ombudsman route? Advice please!

luckygreen13

Hi everyone - my bank (Santander, although joined it as Abbey) has made an offer to me after I tried to reclaim charges and I'm just wondering whether I should still go through the Ombudsman route? A little background first :

I separated from my spouse a few years ago and had to remortgage to give them money to keep the house - although this doubled my mortgage I was toddling along just fine; although not living how I used to, I was managing to pay the bills, credit cards, feed my children and still get myself the odd treat. Then, 18 moths ago my son decided to leave school and take up an apprenticeship - my benefits stopped for him, also maintenance was ceased and I lost approx £450 a month in income. This started a whole rollercoaster of bank charges, credit card debt, etc. I joined a DAS (Debt Arrangement Scheme) through Citizens Advice to pay off the cards.

This is the shortened version of what I told the bank - I have incurred a total of £1113.94 (includes interest) bank charges in 9 months! I claimed through the financial hardship route. My bank replied with a very letter - the offer part is as follows:

"Having reviewed your claim we can see you are in a cycle of charges. To help break this cycle we have arranged to refund the charges of £60.00 that debited your account in February 2010.

We have also arranged to cancel charges totalling £50.00 which have not yet debited your account.

In addition, we will cancel any unauthorised overdraft bank charges, to be applied to your account until the end of the statement period 01 April to 01 May 2010. These will appear on your statement, but will be cancelled prior to debiting your account."

I am still living in a £900 overdraft which doesn't look as if it will ever be cleared (ever!).

Do you think this is a generous enough offer or should I still be going on to claim the full charges through the Ombudsman? Sorry, for babbling on - and this really was the shortened version of my woes!! Thanks

natweststaffmember

luckygreen13 wrote: »

Hi everyone - my bank (Santander, although joined it as Abbey) has made an offer to me after I tried to reclaim charges and I'm just wondering whether I should still go through the Ombudsman route? A little background first :

I separated from my spouse a few years ago and had to remortgage to give them money to keep the house - although this doubled my mortgage I was toddling along just fine; although not living how I used to, I was managing to pay the bills, credit cards, feed my children and still get myself the odd treat. Then, 18 moths ago my son decided to leave school and take up an apprenticeship - my benefits stopped for him, also maintenance was ceased and I lost approx £450 a month in income. This started a whole rollercoaster of bank charges, credit card debt, etc. I joined a DAS (Debt Arrangement Scheme) through Citizens Advice to pay off the cards.

This is the shortened version of what I told the bank - I have incurred a total of £1113.94 (includes interest) bank charges in 9 months! I claimed through the financial hardship route. My bank replied with a very letter - the offer part is as follows:

"Having reviewed your claim we can see you are in a cycle of charges. To help break this cycle we have arranged to refund the charges of £60.00 that debited your account in February 2010.

We have also arranged to cancel charges totalling £50.00 which have not yet debited your account.

In addition, we will cancel any unauthorised overdraft bank charges, to be applied to your account until the end of the statement period 01 April to 01 May 2010. These will appear on your statement, but will be cancelled prior to debiting your account."

I am still living in a £900 overdraft which doesn't look as if it will ever be cleared (ever!).

Do you think this is a generous enough offer or should I still be going on to claim the full charges through the Ombudsman? Sorry, for babbling on - and this really was the shortened version of my woes!! Thanks

When was the worst of the charges?
When did you start incurring charges and did it lead to priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)?
If you read my signature it explains how they should deal with you under financial hardship. I think the offer looks ok but as to whether you want the FOS to take another look based on the amount is up to you but your argument must be that the bank have halted charges or refunded them later than you believe that they should have ie February 2010. The issue for you is date they refunded and not that they have offered less than 100% of the charges. Hope that makes sense

luckygreen13

Hi and thanks for your reply. The worst of the charges was last August/September/October. I actually had to cancel utility direct debits in order to pay charges and not incur more charges - I've done this several times. I'm managing to pay mortgage, council tax and secured loan right at the beginning of the month but if I'm running short I tend to cancel so as not to incur charges - this is why they have not been quite so bad lately, but this has got me into a vicious circle of cancelling/paying/reinstating DD's.

Your reply does make sense - at the time of the worst charges I had phoned up the bank and a couple of times they removed one of the charges, which didn't really help when they came to round about £200 at times. I had asked the bank at the time also to take the charges from my account at the end of the month (not 24th) when my wages went in so that I did not incur any more charges - they refused to do this.

I was hoping that, as I am doing a little better just now that the refund help cover the overdraft and get me started on an even keel.

natweststaffmember

luckygreen13 wrote: »

Hi and thanks for your reply. The worst of the charges was last August/September/October. I actually had to cancel utility direct debits in order to pay charges and not incur more charges - I've done this several times. I'm managing to pay mortgage, council tax and secured loan right at the beginning of the month but if I'm running short I tend to cancel so as not to incur charges - this is why they have not been quite so bad lately, but this has got me into a vicious circle of cancelling/paying/reinstating DD's.

Your reply does make sense - at the time of the worst charges I had phoned up the bank and a couple of times they removed one of the charges, which didn't really help when they came to round about £200 at times. I had asked the bank at the time also to take the charges from my account at the end of the month (not 24th) when my wages went in so that I did not incur any more charges - they refused to do this.

I was hoping that, as I am doing a little better just now that the refund help cover the overdraft and get me started on an even keel.

If you take the FOS route then try and explain why you believe that they did not do enough at the time the charges were incurring in spite of you asking them to do so at the time. See what the FOS say.

luckygreen13

Thanks very much ... your help is much appreciated. I'll do this and see what happens - no harm in trying eh?