Asda/Santander and Natwest (just an update)

sunnyspirit

Hi,

I just want to share my experiences with Asda/Santander card and NatWest. I got into pretty serious hardship a few years ago and had to find my way out of that. (Am very slowly getting there.)

NatWest benefited from my hardship (it was the only party that did). I had an overdraft that completely consisted of bank charges, often for going only a little bit over the limit. When I contacted NatWest about those charges at the time, they played a Catch-22 game, which went a bit like this. "You have problems because you are in hardship so we may need to cancel your overdraft, close the account and collect what you owe us." and "You're managing to keep the overdraft at the same level, so we don't need to cancel anything so you're not in hardship."

Although I did contact the ombudsman at the time, I decided not to pursue the matter through the ombudsman. Back then it was because I was tackling many other matters, but now it's just because I would like to keep my NatWest account.

NatWest has cleaned up its act considerably relative to a few years ago. I get e-mail and text alerts when I go over the limit, and NatWest no longer instantly slams on the whopping charges I used to get for even going 50 pence over the limit even when clearing it the same day. NatWest's banking services are pretty good. Just in case NatWest would end up closing my account, I opened one with Coop, but Coop gives me less account information which can make it harder to plan, and Coop's attitude is as rigid as NatWest's used to be. So I am going back to using my NatWest account again. Who'd have thunk!

Asda/Santander card deserves a thumbs up. When I contacted them, they instantly reversed all my charges, without me even asking. At my request, they also agreed to freeze my account for a year during which my balance did not incur interest. :T

Sunny