Standing orders to Santander 123 account

MrsCautious · 11 February 2013 at 9:26PM

Apologies but I'm having a mental block about setting up a standing order from an existing bank account into a newly-opened Santander 123 account. I paid in £500 on Jan 30 and set up a standing order to be paid in at end of Feb, then I changed this as this would have been under a month from my first payment. I have changed it so that the next £500 is transferred on March 4.

The bank advisor who set this up for me asked if this should be 30 days *from* my last payment or 30 days *after*. I replied after. Then he started talking about weekends and I got a bit confused.

Double checking the Santander website, the exact wording is: This is not a calendar month, it is the month from the date you opened your account.

I don't seem to be able to understand the simplest information, is March 4 okay to meet the t&c of the account?

Thanks very much for any guidance, even if to point me in the direction of an earlier thread on this, I couldn't get the search to load properly. I can't think straight, too much stress about other stuff.

innovate · 11 February 2013 at 9:53PM

I reckon you should probably pay no later than March 1 because that is the 30th day after your account opening. February is always a tricky month.

However, I think you are making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself - - just pay the £500 in about a week before the end of the month and you will be fine.

Any interest you may have lost will be absolutely insignificant - - and if it is interest that you are concerned about, just transfer the money out again asap. If you do it all manually, you can do the deposit and withdrawal in less than 2 minutes (with faster payment in cooperative mode).

This doc contains some words about the "month" they use on the 123:

http://www.santander.co.uk/csgs/StaticBS?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1223428158824&cachecontrol=immediate&ssbinary=true&maxage=3600

bengal-stripe · 11 February 2013 at 10:00PM

The statement cycle runs from the day you opened the account to the next month. Let's say your account was opened January 20th, the the statement will cover 21st to 20th of the next month (and so on).

You've sent a payment Jan 30th, your account must have been open than and it will have hit your 21st to 20th cycle. If the next payment is March 4th, it will again hit the Feb21st - March 20th period.

Check with Santander when your account was opened. If it was opened Jan 2nd, then the Jan 30th would have been in time, but a March 4th payment would be too late as you would have missed Feb 3rd to March 2nd.

MrsCautious · 11 February 2013 at 11:22PM

Thanks for the replies and guidance. I'm going to call Santander for clarification, I have paid what I consider a decent amount in after the initial £500 and need to understand this better.

innovate · 11 February 2013 at 11:35PM

You can of course pay in more than £500 each month, or you can pay the £500 in smaller amounts, such as 5 x £100. As long as the total deposits you have made in each of your statement months, you have fulfilled the £500/mth condition.

MrsCautious · 11 February 2013 at 11:53PM

Thanks, that's the bit I think I definitely understand, it's just understanding when those statement months run from and to I need to get a grasp of, I had in mind the £500 I paid in on Jan 30 signified the opening of the account but Bengal-stripe's information suggests this isn't the case.

Cornucopia · 12 February 2013 at 12:04AM

Santander says this:

This is not a calendar month, it is the month from the date you opened your account. For example, if you opened your 123 Current Account on the 7th of the month, you must pay £500 between the 7th and 6th of the following month, every month to qualify.

Please ask a member of staff to find out which date your account was opened.

From what I can see, if you regularly credit your account on a date well away from your statement date, there will never be an issue.

The £500 is not a subscription - simply a qualifying criteria. You can take it straight out of your 123 account as soon as it arrives, if you want. They simply want to see a regular, large-ish credit, like many current accounts do these days.

I have a feeling that some of the misunderstanding around the account is about the way Santander are marketing it. It probably is best understood as a sole current account, but S seem to be pitching it as an additional account.

MrsCautious · 12 February 2013 at 12:22AM

Thank you Cornucopia for taking the trouble to post that.

MrsCautious · 20 February 2013 at 3:24PM

Hi, just thought I'd update here in case it's of use to anyone in the future. My first payment went into the new account on Jan 30. I called and checked and the date of the account opening was Jan 23. The statement dates are Jan 23-Feb 23. This means that money going in in early March meets the terms so I can now stop stressing about this tiny detail. Thank you everyone for your help and explanations.

Standing orders to Santander 123 account

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