Missing Tessa account held by Abbey / Santander

mr.magoo_4

Hi, been rather busy lately, mum quite ill... I have been through her paperwork and cannot find any transfers or new accounts for the maturing value of her TESSA. So Mum will be sending this response

The Company Secretary
Santander UK plc
PO Box 1109
Bradford
BD1 5XS

Dear Sir or Madam

Your Ref: XXXXXXXXXXX

I am dissatisfied with your response so I am writing again to request that you send me all data you hold under the Data Protection Acts 1998 to which I have a right to subject access under such Act.

Mrs XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, address
Tessa Account: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Instant Saver Account: xxxxxxxxxxxx

In your letter, dated 1 October 2010 - Ref xxxxxxx, you say transactions from 2002 were retrieved, I request you supply details of these transactions and explain the circumstances in which Santander is required to hold past account information for more than six years.

Enclosed are copies of my final Tessa Account statement and a letter from Abbey National asking for additional information to complete the TESSA application. I ask you again to provide evidence of what happened to my funds after the Tessa matured.

I draw your attention to the name of the person who signed on behalf of Abbey National to request more information to complete the TESSA application; the name is XXXXXX, the same surname as me. I request you provide information pertaining to staff fraud that may have directly or indirectly affected my investments after my TESSA matured.

If you need any more information from me, or another fee, please let me know as soon as possible.

If you do not normally deal with these requests, please pass this letter to your Data Protection Officer or another appropriate officer.

Yours sincerely

mr.magoo_4

Did get a letter from Santander's Data Protection Team saying they would respond but mum passed away before they pulled their finger out...

Information they sent shows the missing tessa account was closed and transferred to a K account, but the K account is not on the list of (open and closed) accounts that santander say are associated with mum. So I sent the death certificate and the third SAR to santander asking where is the money?

Well after nearly 5 weeks, heard nothing, so I phoned to ask what was happening. They did not have the letter and would have to check in the post room, they would call me back the next day. Next day came and and by 5pm, no phone call, so phoned again. they were pleased to announce they had found my letter and would deal with it quickly.

another two weeks pass and the same SAR information arrives again, so I am still no closer to locating the missing tessa funds. I can see the transfer, I have directed santander to the their document showing the transfer, yet they still refuse to indicate how to access funds.

any one know an ex santander employee who might be able to help?

Does anyone know what a K account means?

Constructive suggestions on how to move this forward welcome...

AirlieBird

This may be a long shot but all accounts are required to be reported to HMRC. You could make a SAR to HMRC requesting data they hold on all bank/building society accounts held in your mum's name. I don't know how far back HMRC holds data for, but you may be able to get the account number or find when Abbey/Santander stopped reporting the "k" account to HMRC.

elektra

mr.magoo wrote: »

Did get a letter from Santander's Data Protection Team saying they would respond but mum passed away before they pulled their finger out...

Information they sent shows the missing tessa account was closed and transferred to a K account, but the K account is not on the list of (open and closed) accounts that santander say are associated with mum. So I sent the death certificate and the third SAR to santander asking where is the money?

Well after nearly 5 weeks, heard nothing, so I phoned to ask what was happening. They did not have the letter and would have to check in the post room, they would call me back the next day. Next day came and and by 5pm, no phone call, so phoned again. they were pleased to announce they had found my letter and would deal with it quickly.

another two weeks pass and the same SAR information arrives again, so I am still no closer to locating the missing tessa funds. I can see the transfer, I have directed santander to the their document showing the transfer, yet they still refuse to indicate how to access funds.

any one know an ex santander employee who might be able to help?

Does anyone know what a K account means?

Constructive suggestions on how to move this forward welcome...

From memory ( without looking back through my documents), all my passbook accounts had account numbers beginning with 'K'.

I read the above as the Tessa being closed and the amount transferred to an account in a name of someone else. I don't know how you would get Santander to reveal that name though.

I'm not sure how the account would be closed without the passbook( you said you had the passbook?).

Anybody else in the family or a carer have access to the account details ?

Could your Mum have transferred it to someone else in family ? You don't say when Santander say it was closed, how this fits in with your Mum being housebound.

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.

quincy.magoo

Hi, sorry for the delay in responding, been rather busy. Once probate was granted I went back to square one and paid a visit to the local Santander branch to present them with a request to close mum's live account. I was directed to an investment advisor who dealt with the paperwork for live account.
Then I produced the paper work from Santander's data protection team related to the lost account. He was most surprised to a page titled "General Investments Alpha Dump - Tax Exempt Special Savings Account" which showed the lost account being closed and transferred to a 'K' account. After delicate discussions he agreed to contact Santander's archiving company and on the transmission log it shows the request is addressed to Microfish. I do not know if Microfish is misspelt, an external company or another division of Santander.

After two weeks I went back to the local branch and was presented with evidence from Microfish showing the account was closed three months after it had matured. Can I access the paperwork that supported the account closure? No….. Did mum close it? well that is the 64,000 dollar question... Mum went to her grave believing that money was still untouched in her account, but she just could not access it....

TheMatrix_2

Are you sure that is mircofish and not microfiche? If so this is a very archaic way of archiving documents.

cottager

TheMatrix wrote: »

Are you sure that is mircofish and not microfiche? If so this is a very archaic way of archiving documents.

Maybe not so much at the time they were archived? -- but yes, I'd have thought for older stuff it'd be more likely to be microfilm than microfiche.
('Fiche are still alive and well in some circles -- family history research for instance )

Hope you get to the bottom of this, magoo; and I'm sorry for your loss.

ChiefGrasscutter

Don;t know if this helps
I keep everything
I've looked at my old Abbey National Pass books for the account number formats

Opened Mid 1980's... H followed by a 6 digit number
Opened late 1980's K followed by a 5 digit number
Opened very late 1980's .....K followed by a 6 digit number followed by 3 letters being the first 3 letters of my surname.
Opened early 1990's format as per very late 1980's but now a 7 digit number in middle

Yes, microfiche is very common in family history - and it's really annoying when people don't put them back in the correct place in the storage folders. Generally its easier to get to the correct position quicker with stacks of indexed microfiche than threading rolls of microfilm though a reader.
Old newspapers are invariably on microfilm.

Off topic...
Engineering also virtually as standard (pre everything on CAD that is) microfiched drawings immediately after they were drawn out (apertures cards they were called) , and if you wanted a print you printed it from the fiche. This was the way of distributing drawings around the factory (Bespoke capital goods sector) this was in the 1980's and 1990's..

elektra

quincy.magoo wrote: »

Hi, sorry for the delay in responding, been rather busy. Once probate was granted I went back to square one and paid a visit to the local Santander branch to present them with a request to close mum's live account. I was directed to an investment advisor who dealt with the paperwork for live account.
Then I produced the paper work from Santander's data protection team related to the lost account. He was most surprised to a page titled "General Investments Alpha Dump - Tax Exempt Special Savings Account" which showed the lost account being closed and transferred to a 'K' account. After delicate discussions he agreed to contact Santander's archiving company and on the transmission log it shows the request is addressed to Microfish. I do not know if Microfish is misspelt, an external company or another division of Santander.

After two weeks I went back to the local branch and was presented with evidence from Microfish showing the account was closed three months after it had matured. Can I access the paperwork that supported the account closure? No….. Did mum close it? well that is the 64,000 dollar question... Mum went to her grave believing that money was still untouched in her account, but she just could not access it....

They still haven't answered who the 'K' account belonged to. Sadly it does not look like you will ever find out.