Eroski Red card: €37 penalty charged on a €46 missed payment in Spain

The Eroski Red card turns a €46 missed payment into €83

A €46 charge at a petrol station went through the card terminal without a hitch. Days later, the account linked to the Eroski Red card — marketed by Santander Consumer Finance — returned the payment due to insufficient funds. The result: a €37 surcharge on the original €46, an 80% markup for a payment that was only a few days late. The customer, who signed up after being assured that "it wasn't a credit card", has spent three months trying to cancel it without success. According to his account, Eroski's response was to refer him to the bank: "Eroski has nothing to do with it".

The case, posted on a consumer forum, exposes how supermarket loyalty cards work: a product presented as a discount tool that ends up operating as a disguised line of credit, with recovery fees that can exceed the original amount.

What is the unpaid balance recovery fee?

The surcharge is not technically a late payment interest. According to a forum participant, it is a fee for recovering an unpaid balance (comisión por reclamación de saldo deudor), set out in the standard terms and conditions that Santander Consumer Finance filed with the Banco de España (Spain's central bank). The difference is not merely semantic: late payment interest is calculated on time and outstanding capital, while the fee is applied as a lump sum as soon as the system detects an overdraft.

That is the first problem. The customer asked repeatedly, over several phone calls, where this cost appears in the contract. Nobody could clarify it. The answer he received was "that's what the computer system calculates", along with an invitation to read terms and conditions that, in his version, do not detail a surcharge of that magnitude.

According to a forum user, the rules on overdrafts require the lender to have made a verifiable collection effort before charging the fee. An ordinary letter or an unrecorded phone call is not enough. If there is no documented demand, the fee is open to challenge. And worth reclaiming.

Why the card terminal accepts payments without funds

The card is not a credit card, but it does not work like a conventional debit card either. According to one participant, for small amounts the terminal authorises the payment without checking the balance in real time. The charge is settled later, and if the account has no funds, the overdraft appears. It is the same mechanism used by credit cards, but without the contractual protections they include.

Hence the paradox pointed out by several affected customers: the system allows the payment, which creates the overdraft, and then charges for the overdraft. The customer did not choose to go into debt; the infrastructure did it for him.

Some argue the cardholder is at fault for not having funds. This argument has a practical flaw: if the card is sold as a loyalty tool and not as credit, the user does not expect a €46 payment to trigger a financing mechanism with fees attached.

Eroski, Santander and the sharing of responsibility

Eroski is the visible brand on the card. The financial backing comes from Santander Consumer Finance. When a conflict arises, the supermarket washes its hands and the bank points to the contract. The customer is left in no man's land.

The store brand is not innocent. It lends its name, its store network and its image of trustworthiness — including its association with consumer organisations — to a financial product whose terms it does not control, or does not want to control. If it finds the outcome unethical, it has the power to change the agreement. It does not.

The pattern repeats with other supermarket cards. One customer reports that with the Carrefour card he had the same missed payment and was not charged any surcharge at all. The difference lies not in the customer, but in the terms each chain negotiates with its issuer.

Cancelling: the ordeal nobody mentions

Three months after starting the process, the customer still has not managed to cancel the card. The pattern is familiar: he is referred to the finance department, then to an email address, then to a fax, and finally to silence. Issuers have incentives not to lose customers, and an administrative cancellation generates no revenue.

The advice circulating among those affected is blunt: if there is no way to cancel it, destroy the card and forget it exists. It is not an elegant solution, but it prevents the product from continuing to generate fees on an account the holder believes is closed.

For complaints, sending a burofax (a certified fax-telegram service) with proof of receipt has been the most successful route. It provides verifiable evidence of the request and obliges the lender to respond in writing. Several customers have recovered the surcharge after proving they had sufficient funds in the account at the time of the charge.

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A prediction, with reservations: as long as retail chains keep outsourcing their loyalty cards to consumer finance companies, cases like this will keep happening. The overdraft fee business is far too profitable to disappear of its own accord. Only regulatory pressure or fruta damage can move it. And neither seems imminent.