Santander

I have been a member of the Abbey National since I was 8 years old, I had my birthday party at the Wimpy in Sydenham high street and as part of my party gift from the Wimpy for having my party in their establishment the Wimpy had opened up an account for me with the Abbey and deposited my first pound. Ever since then I have been a member of the Abbey, now known as Santander and I have been on one hell of a roller coaster.

I had been depositing money into the Abbey for over 20 years and I was one of the unfortunate ones that got hit by the incredible bank charges every time that I went overdrawn. Sometimes I had gone overdrawn for as little as 2p for only a few hours and then hit with a £30 fine. Of course Abbey did not call it a fine but insisted it was purely a charge. It wasn't until people started to flock in the thousands to reclaim their bank charges by writing to the Ombudsman that I decided to calculate how much I had been charged by the bank over the last 5 years. I was shocked to discover that I had been charged around £5000 by Abbey National over a 5 year period, sometimes being charged up to £160 a day. So like everybody else I tried to claim back my charges too, but never received a penny back.

It was not until I started a new and better job that I stopped going overdrawn with my bank and I am happy to say that the Abbey now officially called Santander, have not fined me, sorry "charged me" for anything over the last few years. I have learnt that managing my accounts better and being a responsible banker has helped me to form a good relationship with my bank, with santander even giving me a loan. Of course I would never had needed the loan if the bank had not charged me so much over the years but I have to say that becoming a responsible banker was all I needed to do to stop these charges.

I will never agree however that the bank should ever charge so much to one individual, especially when they would charge me 4-5 separate charges of £30 all at the same time making me so overdrawn that I would be blatantly set up for more charges for the following month. The bank should understand that putting their customers in such a vicious circle can only end in disaster for their customer. I am still with Santander and I guess I will be until the day I die, it does take two to build a relationship and I am happy to say that my relationship with my bank is on the right path now.