UK: Santander to pay £1.4M in overdraft mistakes

20,000 Santander customers will be refunded overdraft fees after the bank failed to warn them they’d dipped into the red.

The bank is supposed to warn customers by text if they go into an unarranged overdraft, which costs £6 (US$7.64) a day.

But the bank didn’t alert customers who opened either an Everyday Current Account or an Essentials Current Account between February 1, 2018, and February 20, 2019, that they’d gone into an unarranged overdraft.

Under banking rules, firms have to enroll new customers into overdraft alerts within three working days—unless they choose to opt out.

The bank is now refunding users the fees they were charged to the combined tune of £1.4 million (US$1.8 million). The issue has come to light after Santander reported it to competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

In a statement the CMA said, “We welcome Santander refunding around £1.4million of charges levied on customers who should have received an alert but did not, and who went on to receive charges for exceeding a pre-agreed credit limit.”