Need HELP urgently! Lost Savings!

jimjames

oramgepekoe wrote: »

Have you received any correspondence from Abbey/Santander over the years such as an annual interest staement.

If you have not moved house in that time then you would expect that they would write to you to confirm annual interest or any significant event on the account like closing it.

if you have moved in that time then it is entirely possible that Santander wrote to the old address saying the account would be closed if no transactions or contact in a certain period of time. If this letter was returned to the bank by the new occupiers you can see how the account would be marked as dormant and then in time marked as closed.

If you have moved it is also theoretically possible that the new residents at your old property could have closed the account based on the information they had. I'm not suggesting this has happened but purely as a possibility to explain the situation you detailed.

Loughton_Monkey

Make no mistake, Santander (Abbey National) will have transactions on the account recorded somewhere. Most likely, with the age of this one, it will be on some microfiche, microfilm, or even paper records. But it will have some record. They will be reluctant to do any further work on this in view of the difficulty in searching through dusty archives.

They will have migrated from one computer system in the last 18 years. Fact. Possibly more than once. Each time, balances are meticulously compared, old to new, to avoid mistakes.

Banks are extremely careful about this.

There is, however, a very small possiblity that they made an error. A much larger possibility is that the account was closed and the money withdrawn. This could well have been fraudulent [the raping of dormant accounts by staff are not unknown, but would tend to be followed by meticulous checks when found].

In any review by the Ombudsman, or Courts - were it to go that far, then Santander will be able to produce what their record show regarding the 'fate' of the money (although they will not necessarily be able to show signatures or forms etc.). Equally, they will be able to demonstrate what letters/statements etc. would have been sent, and to what address.

D1zzy

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

There is, however, a very small possiblity that they made an error.
.

:eek: Don't forget we're talking SANTANDER here - there is always a BIG possibility thay they made an error .

(These are the people who sent me someone elses account no, accepted my money - then refused to talk to me about it 'cos it wasn't my account!!!)

Arthurian

They can close your account if it has been dormant for 15 years, and take the money for the wider community.

http://www.unclaimedfinances.co.uk/facts-dormant-bank-accounts-government-act.html

You should still be able to claim it back, though.

Stompa's earlier reference to http://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/index.htm would be free, as opposed to the unclaimed assets register mentioned in unclaimedfinances.co.uk article.

jojojez

Hi, I have the same problem with Santander/Abbey. I have two accounts with a total of almost £2000 plus accrued interest. I have the passbooks and all my old passbooks and statements, Santander refused to consider my case as they had been 'dormant' for over 15 years
I then took my case to the Ombudsman, who decided to uphold Santander's argument that I had 'closed' the accounts, I had never received and correspondence from them concerning my two accounts and they had no proof that my accounts were closed just that they couldn't find any 'record' therefore they'd been closed.
I should also point out that I've been a customer of Abbey/Santander for over 30 years and they didn't even have my correct date of birth! I had corrected this on one account but my cheque account, which was older, was completely wrong.
I am now trying to decide where to go for help as I live in France so finding a lawyer is not going to be easy.

Loughton_Monkey

It's your word against theirs at the end of the day.

This one would be very 'meat and drink' for the Ombudsman who must have had thousands more on a similar vein.

You see they don't necessarily have to 'prove' that the account was closed, unless we are talking of about 6/7 years. All they need to 'prove' is that their records are 'accurate' and have always balanced. Almost certainly they have migrated systems at least once (probably more) in the last 15 years. They will have solid 'proof' that all accounts were migrated, and balances 'balanced' before and after migration.

Any bank could prove that they are forced (by customer service reasons) to close X thousand accounts and transfer/pay the money on the basis of 'lost passbook'. Equally, the banks (and ombudsman) would be able to 'prove' that genuinely 'lost' accounts [pure deletion/erasure from systems with no explanation - as opposed to simple temporary confusion over spelling mistakes etc.] are as rare as hen's teeth.

Balance of probabilities?