santander about to wrongly blacklist me

[fourpointsixgt]

last October my 16 y/o son, lets call him John Sidney Jones received a demand from Santander for £570, however the name on the letter was John "Steven" Jones. He doesn't have an account at this bank so I went into the local branch and explained their error to the manager, who said that because my son had just turned 16 in October the computer had "found his name and because it almost matched, sent the debt letter" A very poor explanation in my opinion but he assured me he'd sorted it, and any future letters to be returned to sender marked "not known at this address". 2 more letters came in the following months addressed to John STEVEN Jones which were duly returned, then last week a very strong letter addressed to J S Jones stating that they intend to register the default to the Credit Reference Agency.
Off I went to the branch again in a very bad mood, the manager wouldn't even see me, his sidekick said he was too busy and gave me a phone to use at a table next to a queue of people and a number to ring, 45 mins and 4 calls later all I could achieve was a promise from some call center girl that everything will be fine and not to worry, I was losing it big time, in front of all their customers. The manager still didn't come out of his office to see me, and no other staff members seemed to give a damn, because I wasn't a customer. Should I be worried ? Will my address be blacklisted or is it just the incorrect name that goes on it ?

[The Nur]

I thought this whole "blacklist" thing was a myth, tbh.

[bigandclever]

The Nur said:

I thought this whole "blacklist" thing was a myth, tbh.

It's not so much a myth as a straight-forward fallacy (and has been for years and years) - debt is linked to the person, not the address (unless you have a financial link to someone else at the address).

[The Nur]

bigandclever said:

It's not so much a myth as a straight-forward fallacy (and has been for years and years) - debt is linked to the person, not the address (unless you have a financial link to someone else at the address).

That's one way of saying it

[robbieduncan]

bigandclever said:

It's not so much a myth as a straight-forward fallacy (and has been for years and years) - debt is linked to the person, not the address (unless you have a financial link to someone else at the address).

In theory yes. I have encountered a similar problem with a person with the same first name, last name and DOB as mine. Barclaycard have added a default to my credit record. I have never had a Barcalycard in my life. But this other individual has. Getting rid of this is proving to be very difficult indeed.

[SO27]

There was a feature on Radio 4 Moneybox about similar problems a while ago. The bank seemed to be able to sort it out quite quickly once the media were involved...