the mistakes of Santander

welshjon1

Hey all,

I attempted to close an alliance and leicester account last August 2010 in branch, paying off the balance. About 4 weeks ago I had a phone call from Santander stating that I needed to pay charges on my account. I called them and they said the account was still open and had over 150 pounds of 'non-usage' charges on it. I attempted to explain that I did not have an account, they do not accept any of my arguments so I went into a branch to speak to a manager. He said that if I pay off a direct debit that had originated from the account last september 2010 then he would be able to sort the issue out. He later called me and said he could not and that he would instead lodge a complaint against the original branch on my behalf. Santander have since not contacted me and I am a little lost about what to do next, does anyone have any advice?

regards,
Jon

Premier_2

Hi welshjon1, and welcome to MSE :hello:

Did you authorise the DDI mandate on the account?

If not, tell the bank that and get them to (a) cancel it and (b) refund any DD withdrawals made under it as you never gave the authorisation for the mandate in the first instance.

Presumably you don't know the DD Originator, nor what the amounts are for? See that's another thing - the originator should have advised you at least 10 days before any change to the amount being withdrawn ... so presumably you didn't get that either?

All very odd. Perhaps the originator took the bank details down wrong from someone else who did authorise this?

Anyway, any issues, simply follow the banks official complaints procedure

NormalforNorfolk

Hello

Having seen the post about Santander's mistake, we have a similar'ish problem with them and would just appreciate some tips/advice.

We had a 3yr loan with them (originally an A&L loan) relating to the purchase of a car. We traded-in the car in April and paid off the outstanding balance of that loan at the beginning of May, in order to set up the finance for our new car (via the car dealership rather than a personal loan). It turns out that the finance agreement is again with Santander.

The original loan monthly payments used to come out of a Santander (A&L) current account which we set up specifically for the purpose, by transferring money in each month. We therefore set up the new monthly payments to come out of the same account. However, despite having paid off the original loan at the beginning of May, I have just discovered that they still took a further monthly payment which has put us £166 pounds overdrawn, so we are now racking up unauthorised overdraft charges of £5 per day. What infuriates me is that we received a letter at the beginning of June confirming a) receipt of our loan settlement payment and b) that the loan account was now closed. I am also really annoyed that Santander have not yet informed us that we've gone overdrawn (2 weeks after having do so), so had I not happened to check the balance via telephone banking - we would be none the wiser. The only other time we have ever gone overdrawn in 17 years, was on a Halifax account following a small miscalculation with a cheque payment - but they did at least send us a letter to tell us!

We have subsequently realised that we didn't cancel the d/d once we'd paid off the loan - this was a genuine oversight, however surely if they had closed the loan account why did they still take money?

As soon as we realised, my husband rang Santander to find out why they'd taken money after the loan had been paid off. They could see the mistake and have confirmed they will refund the money back to our account - however they weren't able to help in respect of refunding the overdraft charges currently being racked up - apparently that's another department. They have said that once the money comes back to our account, we need to write to another department to request the o/d charges are waived.

We really aren't very familiar with the subject of overdraft charges etc, so can anyone tell me how this sort of situation is likely to go? will we have a fight on our hands to get back what I consider to be genuinely unfair charges, due to their error - or are we liable because we did not cancel the d/d? Any tips on anything specific to include in the letter would also be welcome.

As you can tell, I am a new to the forum so apologies for the lengthy post!

Premier_2

NormalforNorfolk wrote: »

Hello

Having seen the post about Santander's mistake, we have a similar'ish problem with them and would just appreciate some tips/advice.

We had a 3yr loan with them (originally an A&L loan) relating to the purchase of a car. We traded-in the car in April and paid off the outstanding balance of that loan at the beginning of May, in order to set up the finance for our new car (via the car dealership rather than a personal loan). It turns out that the finance agreement is again with Santander.

The original loan monthly payments used to come out of a Santander (A&L) current account which we set up specifically for the purpose, by transferring money in each month. We therefore set up the new monthly payments to come out of the same account. However, despite having paid off the original loan at the beginning of May, I have just discovered that they still took a further monthly payment which has put us £166 pounds overdrawn, so we are now racking up unauthorised overdraft charges of £5 per day. What infuriates me is that we received a letter at the beginning of June confirming a) receipt of our loan settlement payment and b) that the loan account was now closed. I am also really annoyed that Santander have not yet informed us that we've gone overdrawn (2 weeks after having do so), so had I not happened to check the balance via telephone banking - we would be none the wiser. The only other time we have ever gone overdrawn in 17 years, was on a Halifax account following a small miscalculation with a cheque payment - but they did at least send us a letter to tell us!

We have subsequently realised that we didn't cancel the d/d once we'd paid off the loan - this was a genuine oversight, however surely if they had closed the loan account why did they still take money?

As soon as we realised, my husband rang Santander to find out why they'd taken money after the loan had been paid off. They could see the mistake and have confirmed they will refund the money back to our account - however they weren't able to help in respect of refunding the overdraft charges currently being racked up - apparently that's another department. They have said that once the money comes back to our account, we need to write to another department to request the o/d charges are waived.

We really aren't very familiar with the subject of overdraft charges etc, so can anyone tell me how this sort of situation is likely to go? will we have a fight on our hands to get back what I consider to be genuinely unfair charges, due to their error - or are we liable because we did not cancel the d/d? Any tips on anything specific to include in the letter would also be welcome.

As you can tell, I am a new to the forum so apologies for the lengthy post!

Just make a complaint following the bank's official complaints procedure.
Tell them you expect to be put back into a position you would be in had the bank not made the mistake in collecting money that was not due to them.
I'm sure you will get a positive result based on the facts you have given