Santander problem!!!

Gazwa

Hello, im interested to see if anybody has had any similar problems with santander..

basically i used to have a bank account with alliance and leicester this was closed in june 2008 as i declared myself bankrupt.. i recieved a letter from a&l confirming this...

In august this year a santander account appeared on my credit files.. i have contacted them and they have advised me they have an open current account carried over from a&l..

i have sent an email complaint to santander asking them to remove the information from my credit file and close the account with a copy of the letter from a&l attached.. i have not applied for it and do not wish to bank with them..

its been over a month now and i have only recieved a response to say it will be forwarded onto the relevant department to look into....

so just wondering really where i stand with this to get the infomation removed? and how to follow it up with santander...

any advice/ help greatly appreciated. cheers

Garry

Degenerate

Gazwa wrote: »

Hello, im interested to see if anybody has had any similar problems with santander..

basically i used to have a bank account with alliance and leicester this was closed in june 2008 as i declared myself bankrupt.. i recieved a letter from a&l confirming this...

In august this year a santander account appeared on my credit files.. i have contacted them and they have advised me they have an open current account carried over from a&l..

i have sent an email complaint to santander asking them to remove the information from my credit file and close the account with a copy of the letter from a&l attached.. i have not applied for it and do not wish to bank with them..

its been over a month now and i have only recieved a response to say it will be forwarded onto the relevant department to look into....

so just wondering really where i stand with this to get the infomation removed? and how to follow it up with santander...

any advice/ help greatly appreciated. cheers

Garry

It seems that during the systems changeover, a load of closed accounts/ceased DDs/other stuff that still existed in A&L's database (such records would normally be kept for at least six years) got carried over to the new system without the closed/ceased status coming with it. Result: large numbers of "zombie" accounts and DD mandates being resurrected from the dead.

Your recourse is through Santander's complaints department. As well as fixing their own systems, it's also down to them to correct the false information they have reported to the CRAs. Should they fail to resolve the situation within the requisite 60 days, then you can take it to the financial ombudsman.

I'd think about it though. What is your current BR situation, are you under a BRO, fully discharged or what? What is your current banking situation, stuck with a "basic" account? Only it seems to me the Santander, with their blunder, may have given you back a fully-featured bank account earlier than most bankrupts could hope to regain such a facility.

Gazwa

Thanks for your response,

I was discharged in feb 09.. on road to repairing my credit history and accepted for vanquis just recently..

when i first noticed the entry on my credit file.. i called santander and queried this with them to be told that yes the account had migrated over and that it is a full current account.

so i thought ok maybe this could be good for me as you say to get a "full" account.. the advisor told me i would need to go into a bank branch for them to send me a new card out.. but when i went into the branch they told me there was a lot of blocks on the account and they would only be able to send me a cashcard... which i have declined as it wasnt even a visa electron and would be completely useless to me. im quite hapy with barclays at the moment anyway.. and have a visa debit..

How would i go about taking it to the financial ombudsman should they fail to correct this information...

Thanks again

Loughton_Monkey

Degenerate wrote: »

It seems that during the systems changeover, a load of closed accounts/ceased DDs/other stuff that still existed in A&L's database (such records would normally be kept for at least six years) got carried over to the new system without the closed/ceased status coming with it. Result: large numbers of "zombie" accounts and DD mandates being resurrected from the dead.

Spot on!

As I have posted ad-infinitum elswhere, my wife is wrapped up in an A&L account that simply cannot be closed. Although staff have handled it very poorly, and it still is nowhere near to resolving, I learned yesterday that it is their recent conversion that has caused the disaster. In our case, it is, as I understand it, continually spitting out spurious charges long into the future. Accounts are programmed not to allow closure while charges are pending. Hence a vicious circle that they seem not to have resolved yet.

The villain of the piece was a bogus "Underfunding Fee" being charged while the account had a zero balance. The Fee was absolutely, and utterly wrong (as they admit), and was reversed a couple of days later. But its existence triggered the never-ending chain of knock-on charges, the latest of which is £100.