A customer in Spain says a bank employee told him his mortgage approval depended on buying a package of extra products, including a home alarm system he did not want, according to an account given by content creator Carles Tamayo.
Tamayo, known online as @tamayostuff, documented his experience trying to finance a property purchase in a 2025 episode of the program Futuro Imperfecto. During his first meeting with the branch, the staff member handling his file told him the loan would only be granted if he agreed to take out several additional products, one of which was the alarm system.
Tamayo said he did not want the alarm at all and had not asked for it, but was told it came bundled with the conditions needed to close the deal.
Checking the rules
After leaving the branch, Tamayo checked the relevant regulation published in Spain's Boletin Oficial del Estado, the government's official gazette where all national laws and rules are printed. He found that current rules expressly bar banks from forcing customers to buy tied products as a condition for granting a mortgage.
He then reread the draft contract the bank had given him and noticed that the document itself described the extra services as optional, contradicting what he had been told verbally in the branch.
Confrontation with a hidden camera
Armed with that information, Tamayo went back to the branch, this time with a hidden camera, to challenge the demands he had been given in person. He told the bank employee that Spain's Real Estate Credit Contracts Law bars lenders from making a mortgage conditional on extra purchases.
The employee did not deny the requirement was being applied. Instead, the worker said the bank always did this and that it applied to one hundred percent of all its mortgages.
Threats over the mortgage
When Tamayo refused to take out the alarm service, calling it unnecessary, he said he sensed a warning about whether the deal could still go ahead. According to the recording, the bank representative argued that his refusal affected the branch's tracking of product sales and that without a commercial agreement, the mortgage would not be formalised.
The exchange grew heated. The employee accused Tamayo of trying to exploit a loophole in the process, telling him at one point that he was the one scamming the bank.
Bank admits the rule while defending the practice
Faced with the legal arguments Tamayo raised, the branch eventually acknowledged, in a qualified way, that regulations do prohibit imposing these sales on customers. Even so, the employee tried to justify including the products by pointing to separate commercial arrangements tied to the mortgage.
Warning about hidden costs
Tamayo said the case highlights how little many customers know about their rights when negotiating a mortgage. By his own calculation, adding the bundled products significantly raised the true cost of the loan, to the point where the total he would end up paying came out at nearly double the original mortgage figure.
He urged people applying for mortgages to read the written clauses of their contracts closely and to be wary whenever verbal explanations given at the branch contradict what is actually set out in the formal agreement.
