Santander - help!

pippap_2

Please can anyone help? My daughter (19)opened a second account with Santander in May this year, unfortunately it was a debit card and she used it to pay for £7.00 worth of goods. The next statement she has received says that she now owes £87.39!!! I have written to Santander and they say that she has to pay this astronomical charge (even though I told them she was on job seekers allowance of £50 per week!):money:

Could anyone out there tell me if it is worth challenging this charge or will i, Mum, have to pay it??

Thank you everyone I look forward to hearing from you this is the first time i have posted on here.

talana

My daughter (19)opened a second account with Santander in May this year...

With you so far..

...unfortunately it was a debit card and she used it to pay for £7.00 worth of goods.

And this account came with a debit card, which she used to buy £7 worth of something. Did she have the funds to cover that £7 though? It appears not and she went into an unauthorised overdraft.

The next statement she has received says that she now owes £87.39!!!

..for which she has received charges. Break down these charges for us, £87.39 made up of what?

I'm not quite understanding the story here at the moment. If you go OD you will get charges, that should come as no surprise.

Premier_2

Fully endorse the excellent advice given above by talana

pippap wrote: »

Please can anyone help? My daughter (19)...

...The next statement she has received says that she now owes £87.39!!! ...

... will i, Mum, have to pay it??...

Are we missing some other important info here?

Why are you contacting the bank and why are the bank discussing your daughters account with you?

Unless there is something else you have failed to mention, your daughter is a big girl now and needs to learn to stand on her own two feet. This is probably an ideal time for Mum to put her foot down and stop bailing out her daughter.

podperson

If the charges are this amount then sounds like she has done nothing about it for months and they have escalated. I assume she isn't using this account anymore so she needs to ask the bank if they will freeze the charges so she doesn't keep getting more added and arrange to pay it off a £1 a month while she is on jobseekers. Wouldn't recommend you bailing her out as then she is never going to learn to manage her own finances.

pippap_2

Blimey how strange you are... i wrote on here just to get a bit of friendly advise and I have got rather nasty replys about what I do with my daughter...just thought Id ask someones opinion. Last time I write on here, a friendly answer would have done.... strange people!

talana

pippap wrote: »

Blimey how strange you are... i wrote on here just to get a bit of friendly advise and I have got rather nasty replys about what I do with my daughter...just thought Id ask someones opinion. Last time I write on here, a friendly answer would have done.... strange people!

You've had no nasty replies at all that I can see.

But we do need more info.
Break down the £87.39 of charges for us.
And why are you contacting the bank and why are they discussing your daughter's account with you?
Still seems to be something missing in the story. We can't offer more specific opinion without more facts.

podperson

I don't see why you consider the replies to be 'nasty'? I actually felt I was being rather polite under the circumstances which are these:
Your daughter made an authorised debit card that she did not have the funds for - you seem to think she bears no responsibility for this
She then would have received a letter saying she would be charged for this and also probably for going into an unauthorised overdraft - she has obviously done nothing about this. If she had contacted the bank at this time then they will generally remove the charges as a one-off 'goodwill' gesture.
Several months later because the bank has received no response from her and she hasn't paid the orginal charge she will have received an additional charge each month for still being overdrawn
She apparently still does not want to deal with this and so you are ringing up the bank for her and are going to pay off the charges.

People have tried to give you advice because on these forums we see this situation many times and although you may think you are helping her by bailing her you are merely allowing her to continue to avoid taking any responsibility for her finances so she has no reason not to carry on with this pattern. I appreciate you don't want to hear any of these 'nasty' posts but perhaps bear it in mind the next time this happens.