Arun Picton

Review of Santander Consumer Finance, UK

Can t believe how I ve been treated by them and ho...

Can t believe how I ve been treated by them and how my 80-year-old Grandma has been.
I sold my car in October and the third party called up the bank and made the settlement payment.
I then called the bank and confirmed the payment had been made and they agreed that the payment had cleared.
They then sent me letters confirming the payment had gone through and the car was no longer of interest to them and that they where happy for me to hand the car over to the new owner.
A month passed and my Grandma who is the guarantor on the car got a letter saying my account was in arrears and that if she didn't pay her credit score would be damaged.
She call me extremely upset and asked what had happed. I Had no idea as the bank had not contacted me.
I called them and got through to a very rude lady who said the payment that had cleared on the account they had returned to the payer and that I was not liable for the full owing amount on the policy.
I couldn t believe it so of course I launched a formal complaint with the bank and also received legal advice from my lawyer.

My lawyer went through my case and confirmed it was water tight and I launched the formal complaint.
They said it would take upto 8 weeks but they would try to get it done in 4. And that in this time no letters would be sent out about arrears. My Grandma then continue to receive threatening letters from the bank saying that money was owed and that it would affect her credit score. This made her become very stressed. So she phoned the bank and they put her on hold for 20 minutes. Even though the bank had told me that no arrears letters would be sent out and no calls would be made to any party on the policy they continued to do so nevertheless. I got a call from them today saying they had gone through the complaint and that they would not take responsibility for it. They could not give me any reason for why they weren t taking responsibility for the case and just said that it was not their responsibility.
They also said that they where still looking into some parts of it but they would now start trying to take payments off me again while they investigated it.
What a disgusting way to treat your customers specially your elderly customers from a bank that prides themselves on offering finance to vulnerable people.
I have done a little bit of investigating in the meantime and found an article from a well-known newspaper with several similar complaints against Santander consumer finance saying that vulnerable people had been treated badly by them and neglected.
I asked the question what is the point in using the bank that does not protect your money and when they fail to do their job try to pin it on the customer at all costs.
I now will have to go through the financial Ombudsman and several newspapers have asked to buy the story off me.
My advice to anyone vulnerable or anyone interested in finance do not use Santander consumer finance as the untrustworthy and inadequate at Protecting your money.
If you you are a customer of Santander consumer finance get your money out of their accounts immediately it is not safe.