UK banks charging as much as 800,000% on overdrafts

I specifically asked Santanders Richard McNicol in newton mearns for a debit card where i could never be overdrawn or incur charges. The debit card chip developed an intermittent fault. The branch counter staff Fiona McGregor advised me to keep using it "just to test it". I ended up 21 pounds in debt for 5 days as a result. The card was never supposed to allow a debt to occur. That is the point of a debit card.

My statements now says they have charged me 160 pounds for this and will ratchet it up at increasing amounts every 4 weeks if it cannot be paid. Effectively loan shark payments that will spiral to hundreds or even thousands of pounds very rapidly over nothing but a minor glitch. It does not even matter whose fault these glitches are. They give no warning of the charges or this charge accumulation which is highly suspicious. I found out purely by accident. If it had been after the new year i noticed, I would be into the hundreds of debt over nothing.

Santander now appoint branch managers suited to blatant denial of any fault on their part. Even if you take in evidence they sit and deny everything you say, and refuse to wipe a debt over nothing pulling you into a spiral loan shark style. I caught Santanders Marcus stewart out on two blatant lies. He told me to call customer services to resolve it when the previous day he commented clearly in the branch to his staff that customer services did not work. I mentioned the scandal in the papers and TV to him. He replied "I dont watch TV or news". He also denied all the evidence i presented of the faults they had made, even with printed evidence in front of him (which he refused to look at) and said the entire affair was "my responsibility".

I asked for no overdraft yet they have a variety of faults in the santander system that can produce a minor debt and cause this. They do not tell you this has occurred. Some people have debts approaching a thousands pounds over small errors before they realise a problem occured. Santander have no functioning customer services to deal with it. Their UK manager has been questioned by the treasury select comitee about this in may this year.

The system has turned into a scam, after the banks lawyers figured out how to beat down the infamous OFT charges case on a legal technicality last year, the banks are becoming worse as now there is no legal recourse to have charges returned as previously. Their response is to kick in loan shark techniques. These banks should be taken apart completely or nationalized. It is clear from this they are far too clever in what is clearly now a sociopathic style when regulation attempts are made.

I have put their names in, because public naming and shaming is the only recourse we now have in this situation. All statements are accurate, and my case is being considered as part of a class action suit by the consumer action group.

Felix

Glasgow