Abbey esaver account blocked

halfbiscuit

My partner has an Abbey esaver account. In December she paid a cheque for £20,000 from her late father's executors account into the esaver account. She is an executor for this account. She phoned a few days later to see whether the cheque had cleared, it hadn't but the customer adviser she spoke to told her he could see the cheque going through the system. All well and good, so she left it alone to let events take their course.

In early January she tried and failed to access the account. So she phoned them. Apparently this was such an unusual transaction that they blocked the account suspecting a fraudulent deposit. Abbey had not at this stage made any attempt to contact her. The cheque had cleared by this time. The cheque was in sterling and drawn from a Lloyds TSB account.

She has been unable to speak to anyone in the fraud department. Those people she has been able to speak to have suggested various things, including turning up at a branch with ID and the cheque stub and, on another occasion, producing in branch a solicitor's letter from the executors account. One helpfully told her "at least it's earning interest.". They all seem somewhat hazy about the process. It looks like they are making it up as they go along.

Has anyone else had a similar experience ? If so how did you resolve it ? I wonder if we could recall the original cheque, close the account and start again with someone more competent and less obstructive.

halfbiscuit

Is this unique then ?

Arthurian

I found the incompetence of every financial institution I had to deal with as an executor astounding. They all ask for certified copies of the death certificate and/or grant of probate, plus other ID, then promptly lose all documentation and ask for more. You might find the only solution is to get twice as many certified (by a solicitor) certificates of probate as you think you'll need, and take photocopies of all correspondence (they will lose that, too). If it is absolutely necessary to contact people by phone, have a notepad handy and take down names, times and reference numbers, along with the salient points discussed, and ask them when they expect the matter to be dealt with so that you can phone them back to check progress.

Good luck.

martinman3

halfbiscuit wrote: »

Is this unique then ?

It seems not, read this thread http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1452925

Abbey customer service is legendary for being bad.

The interest on one of my accounts went missing for 9 months during which time I was told only one person was senior enough to authorise the transfer to the correct account and they were too busy to sign it. I contacted the Ombudsman and they finally did the transfer to the wrong account but 3 months later they did it again to the correct account and I then needed to make several calls to get them to take the extra money back.

Look for another bank.

[Deleted User]

martinman3 wrote: »

Look for another bank.

I don't blame you there. I had endless of problems with incompetent Abbey staff - they are by far the worst bank in the country to deal with.

Robert_Sterling_3

When I deal with probate I found everybody ( Building Societys, Banks, The Probate Office etc ) very helpful indeed.