Kurt Barlow Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Hi A friend of mine, a polish national has got herself into a right mess with Santander Crime Inc when she was naively tricked into opening on of their fleecing accounts (monthly charges & punitive OD fees). Basically they sold a premium account charging £10 a month to a polish single mother on polish benefits with a disabled child. The £10 a month is just the start, now having gone into overdraft just off the back of the charges they are now levying £5 a day punitive charges. This technically will take 95% of her monthly income. She rang them and settled the outstanding balance and thus close the account. When she then went to close the account she found a load of other charges had been levied and the account couldnt be closed. It appears their approach is to lock people into a perpetual spiral of debt. I have spoken to various Santander drones today and just gone around in circles. I wouldn't have paid a penny and told them to feck off however she wants to do this properly. Any experience of dealing with Santander complaints / banking Ombudsman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stay Beautiful Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Bank charges are a bitch, the poor get poorer as sure as night follows day. Pay off the overdraft for your friend and then get them to pay you back on the drip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHF Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Though the bank charge case was ultimately lost in the supreme court, these charges can still be refunded if one can prove 'hardship' The rules are pretty strict but it does sound that your friend is eligible. You will probably need to write a letter of complaint requesting the refund on hardship grounds and may have to demonstrate this via an income and expendidture form. Sites like MSE and CAG can help you with these. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHERWICK Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Just want to say that Santander have been very good to me. I found out earlier this year that my cash ISA taken out a couple of years ago only paid a good interest rate for the first year. In the second year I got a mighty 0.1%. A friendly meeting with the bank manager led to me getting all the interest back AND they gave me a £25 bonus too (the same for my wife). However, I must add that I've been a customer of Abbey for several decades, which may have helped... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
okaycuckoo Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Didn't you start a thread on this before? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Injin Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Hi A friend of mine, a polish national has got herself into a right mess with Santander Crime Inc when she was naively tricked into opening on of their fleecing accounts (monthly charges & punitive OD fees). Basically they sold a premium account charging £10 a month to a polish single mother on polish benefits with a disabled child. The £10 a month is just the start, now having gone into overdraft just off the back of the charges they are now levying £5 a day punitive charges. This technically will take 95% of her monthly income. She rang them and settled the outstanding balance and thus close the account. When she then went to close the account she found a load of other charges had been levied and the account couldnt be closed. It appears their approach is to lock people into a perpetual spiral of debt. I have spoken to various Santander drones today and just gone around in circles. I wouldn't have paid a penny and told them to feck off however she wants to do this properly. Any experience of dealing with Santander complaints / banking Ombudsman. Forget about doing anything officially, all those routes lead to paying more and more. offer to email it in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikthe20 Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 OP, The Sunday Times Money section and/or Guardian Money have been after Santander for a while as they get so many complaints about them to their letters/help desk. I suggest you contact one of them and they'll probably see this as a good story to chase. There've been so many now that I think Santander just cave immediately when they get a call from one of them. HTH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNACR Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 My guess would be if you just moved accounts and left them to get on with adding charges, the debt collection letters would probably eventually dry up. Probably only safe if you can afford to pay them if it comes to it. Big failure by the last government to not actually help 'hard working families' by outlawing these iniquitous charges when they had the banks on the ropes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saving For a Space Ship Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/index.php I've often found these consumer action group forums useful Edit: Santander sub forum http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?6-Santander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest eight Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Though the bank charge case was ultimately lost in the supreme court, these charges can still be refunded if one can prove 'hardship' The rules are pretty strict but it does sound that your friend is eligible. You will probably need to write a letter of complaint requesting the refund on hardship grounds and may have to demonstrate this via an income and expendidture form. Sites like MSE and CAG can help you with these. Firstly, I don't think the case was "lost" as such. In fact I think nothing actually changed, in practice, but the wording of the outcome was such as to make people think that it had. Injin will know more I think. Secondly if these were benefit payments then I think that Santander had no right to them in the first place - ie. they cannot just give themselves first creditor status and stand between an individual and receipt of benefit payments. There are channels to be gone through. eight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SarahBell Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Hi A friend of mine, a polish national has got herself into a right mess with Santander Crime Inc when she was naively tricked into opening on of their fleecing accounts (monthly charges & punitive OD fees). Is she in poland? And I really worry that some people are allowed out on their own. "would you like a free account or one where you have to pay?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Barlow Posted May 11, 2011 Author Share Posted May 11, 2011 Is she in poland? And I really worry that some people are allowed out on their own. "would you like a free account or one where you have to pay?" In Poland and naive. Banks are properly regulated in Poland. She didn't understand the spivsters free for all that is Bankster UK PLC. What happened was she had a basic deposit account with Scamtander and needed internet access. Explained she had no UK income, no Uk address (except a friends which they told her to use) and lived on £200 a month welfare benefits in the absence of any maintenance. With the above criteria the Spiv at the Kilburn High Rd branch told her to open the account as described without explaining the penalties. She has never taken a penny out of the account but accrued over £300 of charges in 5 months. I have helped her lodge a complaint as a prequel to going to the Ombudsman. I note Injins comment though. Edit - just to add when she tried to close the account in March various swindlers at Scamtander told her that it was impossible and she would have to come to the Uk to close the account. In the meantime the charges keep racking up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Barlow Posted May 11, 2011 Author Share Posted May 11, 2011 Thanks everyone for your responses . Some interesting stuff. Clearly from what I have seen first hand and read Scamtander are the worst of a bad bunch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Barlow Posted May 11, 2011 Author Share Posted May 11, 2011 Didn't you start a thread on this before? Not on this subject. Previously I posted a thread regarding getting even with the father who refuses, despite court orders to pay any maintenance. I help out as I'm the childs godfather / family friend Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Injin Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Firstly, I don't think the case was "lost" as such. In fact I think nothing actually changed, in practice, but the wording of the outcome was such as to make people think that it had. Injin will know more I think. Yup. The mass campaign to have the matter dealt with via legislation in one fell swoop failed and there was a big bruhahah about how it meant that the whole thing was over on the news. But you can still moan about the contracts you have if you want to on any grounds you like - it's up to the courts individually on a case by case basis, the same as it always was. They handled the PR brilliantly, they always do. Lord knows how many people with a viable claim first of all let themselves be put into a big group and then let their claims slide when that group apparently failed but it'll have been plenty. Secondly if these were benefit payments then I think that Santander had no right to them in the first place - ie. they cannot just give themselves first creditor status and stand between an individual and receipt of benefit payments. There are channels to be gone through. eight Generally the banks assume "low income = easy pickings" and they are right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Barlow Posted May 11, 2011 Author Share Posted May 11, 2011 When I had some card fraud on my business debit card, I emailed Antonio Horta-Osorio and got the problem resolved in a week or two. Ana Patricia Botin is now in charge and whats coming up for her is ceo@santander.co.uk so might be worth writing to her and get a reply from one of her PA's/underlings and appeal to their better self about the above matter. Edit: if anyone is remotely interested, becuase of the way email & MX records work, its possible to knock up a little program which will starting at A, then B etc etc like a password generator does but generating email address names@domainname to pull out all the valid email addresses that exist on a domain name. Can be quite handy if you need to email someone, only hurdle then is getting past the spam filters, but you can overcome this by getting say BT to whitelist your domain name if thats your ISP, and also add your domainname to other whitelists. FWIW. Thanks for the link Trickster. I sent a copy of the complaint to the CEX and got a reply late afternoon. Assured in writing all charges from the point my friend asking for the account to be closed have been reversed. Waiting to see if they refund any of the cash they took in fees. If nothing else the written assurance has provided considerable relief for my nervous wreck of a friend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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