Santander Flexible ISA

El-Bandido

It being the new tax year thought I'd open an ISA with Santander online. Enter your email it said - I tried four, a .eu, my hotmail account, a .co.uk and another .eu - all refused. Evetually it accepted an address I don't normally use and the application was accepted. I'm still awaiting anything further from Santander.

I'll call them I thought - but it's all 0845 numbers so I pay them to report a fault in their system. I don't think so. So I sent them an email. Still waiting for a reply.

These guys just aren't the trouble - I'm going to put my money elsewhere.

Ray

edinburgher

We're only a couple of days into the new tax year and they'll be swamped. I haven't heard anything back from them yet about my application and I wouldn't expect to until next week at the earliest.

Sorry you had problems registering (and I'm hardly their biggest fan), but sending an email about an account that may not even be properly open yet and not getting a response within a couple of days doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

castle96

seems odd that other providers are not offering 'good'/better rates than this, now that the new tax year is hear. Surely a better rate will come along soon ?

jimbow25

Providers normally announce their best deals a month or so before the tax year end. Though good products crop up throughout the year, peak season for ISAs is encouraging people to use new year's ISA (the first opportunity to use it) and but also the previous year's ISA (the last opportunity) - it's the same money in the same account either way to the banks.

Anyone who announces a market leading rate ISA now has already lost a lot of 2010/11 business to competitors! We can always hope but I suspect 3.3/3.35% instant access will not be trumped in the new future - if anything Santander may reduce the rate for new customers (like they did last year from 6th April).

gocat

Just went to open a new flexible ISA account with santander to put in my £5340 allowance.
I already had a flexible ISA account with Santander with the bonus rate which finishes next week. I opened that a year ago.
However they wont allow me to transfer last years ISA into my new ISA so the old ISA will drop down to some silly percentage rate (0.5% I think)
Seems a bit daft to me and will have to go elsewhere to transfer last years ISA to get a decent rate

KonkyWonky

gocat wrote: »

Just went to open a new flexible ISA account with santander to put in my £5340 allowance.
I already had a flexible ISA account with Santander with the bonus rate which finishes next week. I opened that a year ago.
However they wont allow me to transfer last years ISA into my new ISA so the old ISA will drop down to some silly percentage rate (0.5% I think)
Seems a bit daft to me and will have to go elsewhere to transfer last years ISA to get a decent rate

What you described is pretty much standard practice I'm afraid, very few of the top rates will accept transfers. To be fair to Santander they are pretty upfront about this and it is well advertised that you cannot transfer the funds in from another ISA.

If you are still looking for somewhere to transfer an existing ISA then the HBOS Direct Award pays 3% (3.2% if existing customer) AER and accepts transfers.

equitydealer

I opened the Flexible ISA easily (existing savings customer) and it appeared on my list of accounts in under 48 hours.

I transferred the maximum amount into it from an external account without any problems. Happy customer :T (still would not have a current account with them!)

KonkyWonky

equitydealer wrote: »

I opened the Flexible ISA easily (existing savings customer) and it appeared on my list of accounts in under 48 hours.

I transferred the maximum amount into it from an external account without any problems. Happy customer :T (still would not have a current accpount with them!)

Provided the external account is not an ISA then there would be no problems.

El-Bandido

I have now had a call from Santander. Seems that email addresses in the application for the flexible ISA must consist of alpha/numeric characters only (although a . surely works). So, for example, [EMAIL="me@my-isp.com"]me@my-isp.com[/EMAIL] or [EMAIL="john-smith@isp.com"]john-smith@isp.com[/EMAIL] won't work; [EMAIL="johnsmith@isp.com"]johnsmith@isp.com[/EMAIL] will.

You just have to the right name - simples. Santander clearly have a deep understanding of how email works.........

Ray

equitydealer

KonkyWonky wrote: »

Provided the external account is not an ISA then there would be no problems.

It's from my current account.

I don't know if it's just me, but Santander seem to be improving :eek:

Queen_of_the_Hive

One question.... how quick should this show up on the online banking screen? Only opened mine just before closing today.