Help from the Ombudsman

[Planta genista]

I completely forgot, I think ....... ....... to post about how the Ombudsman helped with my son's very long, ongoing trouble with Abbey / Santander.

 

The lost paperwork, ignored letters, the list went on and on. My son is registered with a socio/learning disability so he had been getting into so many difficulties it was a mammoth task to work through it all.

 

We appealed to the FOS on a couple of key issues which I had read carefully from Bankfodder and others as well as failing to handle the account fairly etc.

 

We didn't win on the very unfair charges - which I think we should have as I argued that nowhere were these charges explained before they were incurred and they were penalties - ie when he spent up to £5 he was charged £5 every time, and when he spent £5.01 upwards, he was charged £15 for every payment.

 

They had the option to stop his card but obviously didn't do so as it was a very nice little earner - or so they thought.

 

The Ombudsman found in my son's favour because, despite having years of communication on the issue, the bank failed to have due regard to the MALG guidelines and act accordingly.

 

She pointed out the catalogue of errors and her decision was to award my son £100 to be paid to him as compensation and NOT used to reduce the debt.

 

We agreed and he was duly paid which helped him enormously as he was in real difficulties.

 

That help didn't stop there. I then contacted Santander and asked them to consider writing the debt off given that my son had no prospects of any employment, was waiting for supported accommodation and his outlook was bleak.

 

The upshot was they went straight back to their old games of refusing to discuss the matter with me (despite the Ombudsman pulling them up over their attitude towards us having to send in multiple letters of authority), refusing to then help my son with his finances and immediately sending out threatening letters, despite the FOS stating before that they were unacceptable in their content and had been harassment - and this is where the Ombudsman's ruling really kicked in, because by agreeing to the settlement, they also had to agree with her findings.

 

So I went back to the FOS and explained what was happening, received advice from the person who had handled the complaint, and that gave me all the ammunition to go back to Santander and fight back at their behaviour.

 

Result - my son had the whole of the debt (most of which was a result of their outrageous charges) written off completely with no comeback.

[silverfox1961]

Hi

That is a good result for your son and hopefully it should make Santandurrrr revisit their practices. I don't think it will though.