Santander ISA - Cannot pay money in!

techno79

I've just opened a Santander Flexible ISA account and just came across the same problem. After a week and a half of waiting for my money to transfer over, I finally contacted Santander who confirmed that money cannot be pulled into their ISA account without first setting up a direct debit to the account where the money is being pulled in from. The annoying thing is the Santander website will happily take the external account information and gives no indication that there is anything wrong or any kind of warning that a direct debit needs to be setup first.

As other people have mentioned, I then went to my other account and pushed the money from there to my Santander ISA account which seems like it is going to be more successful (although will find out for sure in a few working days time when the transfer goes through). A Faster Payments transaction would have been nice as the money would have moved instantly/v.quickly but my bank only supports it up to a value of £1000 so my transaction went via the slower 3 to 5 working days route.

Santander really need to pull their finger out if their site is still have issues after a whole year of people reporting the issue.

rjm2k1

Be aware that the online transfer options use up your allowance for the current tax year with no warning.

junglejim2

I too had trouble trying to pay money in from an external account( I am suspicious this is deliberate btw)

What they dont tell you in the ISA info is that you can pay a cheque into the account at a branch, all you need is the account number.

The_Enforcer

I applied online for this product yesterday.

I noticed that on one of the screens it warned you that this account would not allow transfers in.

On the funding options screen, it does give the option to pay a cheque into a branch. As I have an existing A&L current account, I entered the account number and chose the option to transfer funds in from there.

I was also able to link the account to an existing Santander cashcard that I was sent when I opened Flexible Issue 2 last year.

The completion screen gave me a reference number and said I would be contacted within 3 business days, let's see if they can process this efficiently.


EDIT - and the answer is Yes! Didn't receive any notifications, but when I logged into online banking, the account had appeared with £1 in it transferred from the A&L current account - on the second business day. So at least I can confirm that opening with existing access to a Santander current account and their online banking seems to work efficiently enough (and easier than my recent experience of trying to fund a Halifax Web Saver upon opening from a Halifax current account). I expect the real fun and games will start when I inevitably come to transfer whatever is in this ISA to another provider in a year's time, but I'll deal with that bridge when I get to it.