Santander overdraft nightmare

shopaholic2

I hope this makes sense, and anyone can advise...
We have a joint account we no longer use, with Santander. The o/d is £2500, and we currently have the o/d at £2615.00 ish.
Complete over sight on our part due to family problems, and Santander are charging £100 every month for us being over the agreed o/d limit.
I wrote and pleaded our case, offering £50 per month to start bringing it down, they agreed this, and also at the time, refunded over £300 in charges, which was very nice of them.
This left the o/d at £2515, but they then slapped another £100 charge on for being over the overdraft, iyswim?
So if we pay £50 per month it's never going to decrease.
Just don't know what to do, every time we try to negotiate with them, they give with one hand, then take away with another by charging us again.
If we had £115 we would pay it in, and then start paying off what we owe, but at the mo it seems utterly hopeless.

Any ideas?

SideShowBob

It is worth contacting either the CAB or Consumer Credit Counseling Service.
The CCCS were able to deal with my creditor and set up a debt management plan where all charges and interest were frozen.

give_them_FA

I see you no longer use the account. Unfortunately you chose the country's worst bank to have an account with.

I had a friend who got into a similar Catch-22 situation, though not with Santander. You need to speak to someone who has the authority to actually make decisions or use discretion, as the problems are being caused by the automatic action of their computer system.

Basically we went in the bank and spoke to the branch manager, and pointed out that the debt wasn't going anywhere because charges were being added as fast as she could pay. Under those circumstances, I simply said that it seemed pointless continuing to pay if they were going to continue this vicious circle, my friend was willing to reduce or pay off the overdraft but they weren't letting her do it, so there wasn't any advantage to continuing payments. And then they could sing for their money, if they took court action the charge would at least be frozen and they would have to wait forever at £5 or £10 a month.

Luckily the guy was from the real world and agreed to stop charging, until it was paid off. A bit of a bluff maybe but the debt was of no use to them if she didn't pay it. Any help?

[Deleted User]

I would say you need to complain first, I took my case to the FOS, but I was stupid and didn't keep half of the letters that they sent out. I got my charges back, but could not remove the negative credit ref information.

I would at least try the formal complaint and take it to the FOS, obviously as people have stated follow the debt charity routes if this stops the problem getting worse.

I know they are not only a bad bank, but the staff often give you mixed advice and they don't stick to what they agree!.

HTH