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The Press and Journal [CLICK]

[...] HAD TO SLEEP ROUGH WHEN HE COULDN’T GAIN ACCESS TO FUNDS

Student urges boycott of bank after account was frozen

BY SHONA GOSSIP

Published: 29/03/2011

An Aberdeen student who claims he had to sleep rough after his bank account was frozen has launched an internet campaign urging people to boycott the bank.

Shan Udawatte has posted a blog about his experience with Santander after the Spanish banking giant froze his account without any warning because of missing paperwork.

The 28-year-old was preparing to leave Aberdeen to visit a friend in Edinburgh when he discovered he could not withdraw any money.

He immediately visited a Santander branch where he was told the account had been stopped because he had not sent papers confirming he was an international student to the head office. Adamant that he had provided the documents, Mr Udawatte insisted the bank staff double check his file – where they found the paperwork. I explained to the bank manager that I was meant to be catching a train to Edinburgh, and asked if he could guarantee the account would be reactivated that night,” he said.

“I was temporarily staying with friends as I was getting ready to move to England to do my dissertation. They were on the night shift so I explained to the manager I would need to let them know to hide a key for me if I wasn’t going to be able to access my account.

“The manager said I should be OK, but as it got closer to 5pm he said he couldn’t guarantee I’d be able to withdraw money that night. By that time my friends had left for work, so I had no way of getting into their house for the night. I explained this to the bank and told them I had more than £500 in my account, and asked if they could give me £10-£20 to get dinner or a one-way ticket to Edinburgh, but they refused to do that.”

Mr Udawatte left the bank and spent several hours wandering the streets – even stopping off in a city casino to get some shelter from the freezing January conditions.

After falling asleep inside the casino, he was moved on so headed to the bus station. The Robert Gordon University student said: “It was quite late and I fell asleep on a bench, until one of the employees woke me up and told me I couldn’t stay there. I walked round for another couple of hours, constantly checking to see if my bank account had been reactivated. As an international student I don’t have that many people I can turn to in the city, apart from a couple of classmates. The branch knew that and still wouldn’t help me.” His account was reactivated by 11am the next day.

The bank has since apologised and given Mr Udawatte £60 in compensation.

A Santander spokeswoman said: “We are sorry to hear of the difficulties he experienced and have offered him £60 as a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience he encountered.”

Mr Udawatte still intends to go ahead with the blog, however, to let others know about his experience.

bitterwallet [Click] (Scroll down to the relevant date / time on the page which opens)

"A couple of days ago a comment was posted on Bitterwallet that linked to Boycott Santander, a one-man blog set up to highlight yet another complaint. It’s an interesting and unfortunate tale – an international student finds themselves alone in a city overnight, and thanks to a clerical error, Santander block their bank account and only source of money, a fault that Santander fully admit to causing." (24 March 2011 11:30am GMT)