Bank of Scotland term deposit maturity

graham44

My term deposit paid annual interest on its anniversary date direct into my current account. When I took it out was advised bank would write shortly before maturity to advise of options available - can find nothing else in terms and conditions about this, ie. contract appears to be silent on matter.

Prior to maturity, only option was to reinvest in another product or receive payment by cheque.

Maturity date has now occurred. On phoning the appropriate number I am advised that the cheque will now be received by me sometime up to 10 days after maturity date. Then there will be the further time to receive cleared funds. They say they are sorry about this but they are allowed 10 days so that's that then.

Is this form of customer treatment by a bank acceptable to the Financial Ombudsman? In effect the bank is saying that they can have the use of my funds for close to 2 weeks after maturity (thereby I lose interest on money which is truly mine) and more importantly to me during this time I am prevented from re-investing my funds elsewhere !!!

Any helpful comments would be appreciated.

opinions4u

It does seem slightly longer than reasonable.

Have you asked them to reimburse your lost interest?

Is this form of customer treatment by a bank acceptable to the Financial Ombudsman?

Borderline. They do allow for reasonable administration time and any labour intensive maturity process will have occasional backlogs.

This is one that the FSA and FOS would expect to be resolved by the bank though, with the offer of compensation for lost interest.

Ask.