Tweet
Hello all,
Forgive my freshness to this wonderful forum, I have an ongoing issue with Santander (relating to a close Alliance & Leicester account) and I'm not sure they're acting legally here, any help will be most gratefully received.
I had a "bog standard" current account with Alliance and Leicester which I closed over the counter in 2010 with a balance of £0. Reasons that are not clear led to Santander not actioning this account closure (the branch closed a week or two later, just to add to the complexities of attempting to find out what happened) and a Direct Debit was taken approximately six weeks after my closure instruction, as the account closure had not been actioned the payment sent me overdrawn, and I incurred subsequent charges.
I disputed that this amount was owed as the account had been closed, to which I was informed the account was very much open and that no request to close the account had been received. Eventually I received a default from the now Santander for £77 and threatened with various legal wranglings for them to recover this, the overdrawn amount was around £5, the rest being made up of Santanders' charges.
A small forest was consumed in various letters backwards and forwards to address the matter with Santander eventually referring me to the FOS and essentially washing their hands of the case - they believed that he default was entirely justified and had no record of the account being closed.
Towards the beginning of this year I received a letter seemingly out-of-the-blue from Santander saying my case had been subject to an internal review, and good news, the amount had been wiped, my credit file had been adjusted accordingly and the amount owed would be £0 as they had "charged me during a period when they agreed that they would not be charging until the outcome of the charges case etc." Whist I see this didn't strictly admit liability in my case I was relieved and was grateful to accept this explanation.
I believed this to be the end of the matter, until I checked my credit file.
Santander, to their credit have set a £0 balance, and have marked the default as satisfied (from the date of their review) but still shows that the account was defaulted (a satisfaction not appearing to offer much more chance of my house purchase than an unpaid default) and merely that I satisfied the amount. The 'late payment' data remains back to the point they initially chased me for the money, and it's still rather a large 'black mark' on my credit file, also as the amount was set as satisfied at the beginning of this year theoretically this will not remove itself until 2018. Not helpful in the slightest really.
Further communications with Santander elicits the staple reply "we have a duty to maintain records with the CCAs to reflect the conduct of customers' accounts" or similar, and they are saying that I was still "in default" and that my hesitancy to pay must still be recorded.
----
Any suggestions how to move this further? I'm not very good at the legalese but if anybody knows any laws which I can quote regarding how the data must be valid etc I'd be most kind.
I can post bits of the paper-trail up with redacted details if anybody is interested, huge box-file sitting here!
Thank you for taking the time to read this if you have got this far, and I thank anybody in advance for their help!
Forgive my freshness to this wonderful forum, I have an ongoing issue with Santander (relating to a close Alliance & Leicester account) and I'm not sure they're acting legally here, any help will be most gratefully received.
I had a "bog standard" current account with Alliance and Leicester which I closed over the counter in 2010 with a balance of £0. Reasons that are not clear led to Santander not actioning this account closure (the branch closed a week or two later, just to add to the complexities of attempting to find out what happened) and a Direct Debit was taken approximately six weeks after my closure instruction, as the account closure had not been actioned the payment sent me overdrawn, and I incurred subsequent charges.
I disputed that this amount was owed as the account had been closed, to which I was informed the account was very much open and that no request to close the account had been received. Eventually I received a default from the now Santander for £77 and threatened with various legal wranglings for them to recover this, the overdrawn amount was around £5, the rest being made up of Santanders' charges.
A small forest was consumed in various letters backwards and forwards to address the matter with Santander eventually referring me to the FOS and essentially washing their hands of the case - they believed that he default was entirely justified and had no record of the account being closed.
Towards the beginning of this year I received a letter seemingly out-of-the-blue from Santander saying my case had been subject to an internal review, and good news, the amount had been wiped, my credit file had been adjusted accordingly and the amount owed would be £0 as they had "charged me during a period when they agreed that they would not be charging until the outcome of the charges case etc." Whist I see this didn't strictly admit liability in my case I was relieved and was grateful to accept this explanation.
I believed this to be the end of the matter, until I checked my credit file.
Santander, to their credit have set a £0 balance, and have marked the default as satisfied (from the date of their review) but still shows that the account was defaulted (a satisfaction not appearing to offer much more chance of my house purchase than an unpaid default) and merely that I satisfied the amount. The 'late payment' data remains back to the point they initially chased me for the money, and it's still rather a large 'black mark' on my credit file, also as the amount was set as satisfied at the beginning of this year theoretically this will not remove itself until 2018. Not helpful in the slightest really.
Further communications with Santander elicits the staple reply "we have a duty to maintain records with the CCAs to reflect the conduct of customers' accounts" or similar, and they are saying that I was still "in default" and that my hesitancy to pay must still be recorded.
----
Any suggestions how to move this further? I'm not very good at the legalese but if anybody knows any laws which I can quote regarding how the data must be valid etc I'd be most kind.
I can post bits of the paper-trail up with redacted details if anybody is interested, huge box-file sitting here!
Thank you for taking the time to read this if you have got this far, and I thank anybody in advance for their help!
Comment