Santander business account - Debit card international fees

tfboy

A bit of a long shot, but if anyone here uses Santander for their business and travels abroad, I'd appreciate to know if you get charged for using your debit card (a) at ATMs for cash withdrawal and (b) for normal purchases / transactions.

I've been a business account holder with Santander for three years and often travel abroad for business. I have often used my debit card at cash machines and for purchases as they never charged me any transaction fee and the exchange rate was pretty good.

As of the 1st November, I now appear to have an additional fee levied on each transation. A" (International use fee £x.xx) " comment appears at the end of each transaction's description. Annoyingly, on the dozen or so transactions I've made since the change, only one of them has the actual amount shown; all the others have the end truncated so I get either a "(International use fee £" or a "(International use" or sometimes just "(International" !

I phoned their business banking helpline and the person I spoke to said they have always charged a small fee for international usage, although this has never been my case in the 3 years I've had the account with them. He also suggested that it's exactly the same as a personal account where you get charged. I agree that my personal debit card (I also have a personal 123 account) gets charged for ATM withdrawals and usage abroad, but till November, this had NEVER been the case on my business debit card.

I asked him where the T&Cs for small businesses can be found on their website as I can't see them. He couldn't find them either.

I then asked to lodge a complaint as this is clearly a change in the way my account is charged and something Santander had never informed me that these changes were coming - I've double checked all correspondence and bank statements - nothing about an impending charge. He said I couldn't file a complaint because it's nothing wrong - they've always charged for using the card. If that's the case, then maybe somehow I missed out on that and they've finally realised. What annoys me is I can't seem to find any statement that details what the charges are. And as I only have a single amount shown on my statement, I don't know if it's a flat fee or a percentage of the amount which can get quite high if the transaction is of a higher value.

Anyone have any experience or thoughts?

tfboy

OK, either I should have been charged and wasn't or my account's "settings" have been updated. I've just seen the new T&Cs which came into effect 1st November...
http://www.santander.co.uk/csdlvlr/ContentServer?c=SANDocument_C&pagename=WCSUKPublicaLte%2FSANDocument_C%2FSANDocumentPreview&cid=1324581079807

System

They have likely simply split out the forex fee.

tfboy

I did think about that, but that's not the case.

26/10/2016 CARD PAYMENT TO SNCF,22.15 EUR, RATE 0,89/£ ON 24-10-2016 ==> cost me £19.78

02/11/2016 CARD PAYMENT TO SNCF,22.15 EUR, RATE 0,90/£ ON 31-10-2016 (INTERNATIONAL USE FEE £0,55) ==> cost me £20.59.

I phoned on Monday and enquired. They didn't get back to me so I've phoned again today and complained about this. They've promised to get back to me by CoB today...