Help!!! Overdraft fees

whyohwhy73

I'm a newbie to the forums but am really hoping someone can help.

I have a Santander account which I stopped using around a year ago when I changed jobs, basically because I was fed up of them putting up the overdraft costs. When I stopped using the account, there was an overdraft which I finally paid off in full in January, including the charges applied to that time. I stupidly thought that this cleared the account and left it unattended. Since then, they have continued to charge me an overdraft fee because my payment must have been made after the cut off for the decision to charge. So in essence, they have been charging me for an overdraft that they created. The bill currently is £-124.51, with what looks like another £70 that they intend to take at the end of the month.

So, question is, where do I stand? Do I have to suck it up, or am I within my rights to fight this? Never been in this situation and feeling pretty dumb for not having closed the account when I paid it off. HELP!!!

Archi_Bald

whyohwhy73 wrote: »

Never been in this situation and feeling pretty dumb for not having closed the account when I paid it off. HELP!!!

You never did pay the account off completely, which is the reason why you are overdrawn to the tune of £120+.

Write (don't talk) to your bank, explaining you wish to close the account, ask them to provide you with a full and final account of all your outstanding debt, and a date by which the full and final amount has to be settled, and how it needs to be settled.

whyohwhy73

Thanks for the response. I take it you're saying I just have to pay....?

Archi_Bald

Probably. But if you grovvel enough about not knowing how they apply charges (which should be easy to do since you genuinely don't seem to know - - even though it's all detailed in the T&Cs you agreed to), they might let you off with at least some of the debt.

Hominu

Since you were racking up charges, surely Santander sent you statements and notifications of charges they were going to apply to your account ?

Did you not read any of these for the past year?

As Archi Bald says, you may get some of the charges dropped by grovelling, but don't expect them all to be dropped. They are a legally enforceable debt that you (not Santander) created by failing to check your account on a regular basis.

If you had attempted to close the account a year ago, you would have been told about the impending charges which would have been applied on the next statement.