A+L makes charge every month for 2 years

matty_hunt

Hi. I would appreciate your opinion on this scenario.

In Jan 2006 I opened an A+L premier direct account for my father as a refer-a-friend grab £50 objective. The criteria were met and the incentive paid. I then closed the account. Last week, whilst investigating another account with A+L, my father was told the premier direct account was still live and was £116.59 in arrears. I have just accessed the account online and it seams that they never closed the account and every month for over two years they have charges an under funding fee of £5 plus an overdraft usage fee of £5.
Unfortunately I didn’t keep any literature about the account so have no letter to prove I requested the closure of the account.
However, should A+L not have contacted us about the account being in the red? The said they don’t send a letter because it is an online account but they have never sent an email to the registered address and there are no messages in the secure message part of the online account. So in two years they have never made any attempt to contact us about the account being charged and overdrawn. They have not even sent an email to say a statement is ready, which I regularly get with my A+L account.
Obviously I am not happy about paying the fees. Since A+L never informed us that the account was being charged, where do you think we stand with not paying?

Many thanks.

jonesMUFCforever

The fact that you have not used the account at all since then should stand you in good stead.
Write a letter to their Customer care department asking them to close the account and write off the charges.

If they agree to do this check your credit files in a month or so to make sure that this has not damaged your history.

MarkyMarkD

A&L should (would?) send you an under-funding letter many months before actually starting to charge you.

You should have expected a response to your request to close the account. As you clearly didn't get one, you should have followed it up.