Old Alliance & Leicester Current Account Debt Big Problem Now !

Dannydebt

I had a Current account debt with A&L which I had been repaying for many years on time and with an arrangement with their collection agency, now with the merger it has been transferred to Santander and I received a letter from them to tell me NO arrangement is in place and I should contact them to arrange one or repay the amount outstanding.

I wrote to them a few weeks ago explaining about the prior arrangement and enclosing copies from A&L showing the arrangement and although I continue to pay the amount that was arranged prior to the merger I now receive bank statements for this account which I never did before and it shows my payment each month.

But today I received my monthly statement and it shows a £100 charge for an unauthorized overdraft due to debit on 2nd Nov !.

What are they playing at !, I have written to them today basically asking just that and asking for them to honor the existing arrange and to remove the charge, as at £100 a month it is only going to increase the amount owed !.

I would be grateful for any thoughts or help.

pmduk

It would appear that the best way of dealing with a problem at Santander is to go down the formal complaints procedure.

Degenerate

As you have the documentation to back up the existence of an agreed arrangement to pay, I would recommend you continue to make payments in accordance with that schedule and ignore any charges that accumulate whilst the complaint is being dealt with - they should be removed when Santander either finally get their act together, or get their wrists slapped by the ombudsman.

faerie_girl

This has just happened to us!
We got a bank statement sent saying my husbands account is going to be charged with £100 overdraft fee in a couple of weeks.

The problem started about 4 years ago when we disputed some bank charges. The account got frozen whilst it was investigated. For a couple of years we heard nothing and kept being fobbed off. Husband checked his credit file as he had been refused credit when as far as we thought our credit rating was okay. It turned out our account wasn't put on hold properly so they had put 3 missed payments a month for a long time. We called up and spoke to someone who put the account on the hold it should have been. About 3 months later we called them to say we can't be bothered fighting anymore so we will pay it off in installments if they correct the credit file for their mistake. So we arranged to pay x amount a month over about 5 months. We checked out credit file and again they had put 3 missed payments on a month. When we queried this the advisor said we should have been told this would have happened. It would have been better if we would have just paid a monthly sum by DD whilst the account was still on hold.

This morning we have recieved a statement to say we are getting a bank charge. Husband was not amused and called them up straight away. He explained to the advisor what has happened and she has said she will speak to her manager and call back at 3ish if we can't get it refunded.

We shall see. My husband will be calling them himself to see if we are being refunded as the advisor said she wasn't allowed if we were, only to give us the bad news of not getting it.
If they would have told us we would have being getting a huge charge we would have stretched ourselves to get it paid off and the account closed as the last payment is due next week! We don't know anything about their new charges if it is daily or monthly. The only paper work we get sent are statements.

Be glad to get rid of them! I know several family and friends who are not happy with Santander and who are switching or have already done so.