£850 overdraft with Santander "I" had no idea about

[Gaz7483]

Hi guys,

 

My inlaws have ran into a bit of trouble with Santander. They were formerly A&L customers and have been so for 37yrs. Recently my Mother in law tried to withdraw cash from an ATM using my Father-in-laws card to find that it wouldn't let her. And to top it off the balance read "-£897.15, Available -£47.15"

 

I assume this means he is £47.15 overdrawn on an £850 overdraft?!?! When he had a stroke a couple of yrs ago he pretty much stopped keeping track of his finances as he receives a pretty healthy pension income and all he paid out of it each month was a relatively small amount for rent, and would tell his wife to withdraw bits and pieces here and there for housekeeping etc. Whilst they're both dumbstruck as to where all this money has gone, that's not really the issue I need help with.....

 

They had no idea he had an overdraft on the account. He has never had one, never asked for one, never arranged one & had no idea that he was overdrawn. At this stage, he doesn't even know for how long he has been overdrawn. They have been in their current home nearly 2yrs but have never received a bank statement so they can't even look back on those. They are going into the branch tomorrow to sort this out but are understadably both very concerned as they now have this debt hanging over them that they had no idea about.

 

Can you guys shed any light on this, do you know of other similar cases? If they never arranged the overdraft will they be able to claim the money back + charges etc?

 

Thanks in advance guys.

 

Gaz

[johnvernon74]

Have they never had any letters from the bank regarding this. Its unlikely bank would have put overdraft on without their knowledge. They can consider an overdraft to pay a DD or payment but they would have wrote to your parents. Do you know when the overdraft was added? When was the card last used to take out money. Write to Santander requesting all information SAR and put cheque for £10 in with it. Your inlays will have t sign this. An alternative is to go to local branch with your inlays and see if you can get to bottom of it

[Gaz7483]

No they have no letters whatsoever. They have no knowledge of when it was added or even why. I'm not sure when the card was last used to successfully withdraw money, but I know that it was Wednesday when they were unable to. Do they have a leg to stand on or will Santander simply refuse to accept it was without their knowledge?