Santander S/O Error

u123935

Just to add to the long list of complaints re Santander. I adjusted an S/O last Monday sometime well before 4pm that is paid on Monday nights. Following day I checked the account and it had been paid twice - once for the old amount and once for the new. Mailed a complaint, got a phone call, I explained, and was asked if I could arrange to recall the payment! I said no go. Still no resolution after they passed it to their IT dept. The amount is £70 - how do you think I should progress it re compensation?

dunstonh

The problem with allowing people to change their own standing orders is if they do not know the quirks of the system, they can make mistakes.

External standing orders require 2 days notice to be changed. Changing it the day before has frequently resulted in a second payment going out (did it when I used to be in banking 20 years ago to give you an idea of how old this issue is).

I dont want to judge a complaint outcome as banks are very scattergun in their responses. However, I suspect they will refer you to their text on screen about making adjustments within the required timescales and possibly reject your complaint. However, with the amount being just £70, they may find it cheaper not to argue the toss with you and just give in.

As it was your error, I don't see why you should get compensation.

MonkeyMad

u123935 wrote: »

how do you think I should progress it re compensation?

The point of compensation is to repay you for substantive losses caused by someone else. You will need to prove it was Santander's fault that YOU didn't understand that a late change to a SO may make the payment occur twice. If it was their fault the compensation should be exactly the cost to you of the error and at this point I don't see a cost.

Given your other complains against Santander, do you stay with them hoping there are mistakes you can be compensated for?

dtaylor84

I don't see why the system should allow customers to change standing orders if it is likely to result in duplicate charges - it should simply tell them it is too late.

agrinnall

dunstonh wrote: »

The problem with allowing people to change their own standing orders is if they do not know the quirks of the system, they can make mistakes.

External standing orders require 2 days notice to be changed. Changing it the day before has frequently resulted in a second payment going out (did it when I used to be in banking 20 years ago to give you an idea of how old this issue is).

I dont want to judge a complaint outcome as banks are very scattergun in their responses. However, I suspect they will refer you to their text on screen about making adjustments within the required timescales and possibly reject your complaint. However, with the amount being just £70, they may find it cheaper not to argue the toss with you and just give in.

As it was your error, I don't see why you should get compensation.

I'm not sure that I agree with this. While I've never worked on SO systems specifically I do have a pretty good general knowledge of when transactions of various types are processed. I'm not aware of any reason why a SO should be finalised for processing any earlier than the day on which it is due to be paid. The systems that I am familar with would have selected SOs in the batch run done after 4pm, which these days will be fed into FPS for transmission betweenaround 2 and 6 the next morning.

It should not be beyond the means of a bank to allow alterations to the SO right up to the 4pm cut off. If their systems are so archaic that they require an extra day to process a SO then their customer interface should prevent a change being made that would trigger a second payment.

I haven't looked at the OP's other posts about Santander but in this case I would say that there is a failure in customer care. Whether any compensation is due is outside my area of expertise, but an apology would seem reasonable.

Mikeyorks

I'm with Dunstonh on this. It's standard procedure to require SOs to be changed at least a complete working day before they are due to be paid (ie 2 x elapsed days). Reason being that they need to go through a Batch run for the revision to take effect. Extract from Halifax T&Cs :

Please ensure you make any amendments or deletions at least 1 working day before the payment is due so the changes have time to take effect.

Compensation ....... forget it. If you expect compensation for 'own fault' - perhaps it's time businesses started charging customers for contributory negligence?

I don't use SOs as I've never found them useful. Exception being when I've paid into a Regular Saver and it was a requirement. And I'm pretty certain there was some text alongside the amendment / deletion facility at the time to point out exactly what is in my quote.

agrinnall

Mikeyorks wrote: »

I'm with Dunstonh on this. It's standard procedure to require SOs to be changed at least a complete working day before they are due to be paid (ie 2 x elapsed days). Reason being that they need to go through a Batch run for the revision to take effect.

You might be right about this, but that then begs the question of why a change done on the day the SO is due would be picked up that day at all. If it takes 2 days for a change to become effective then it should take 2 days, not "we'll take what you said 2 days ago, pay that, and also take what you said today". Now given that it's Santander anything is possible, but if I was responsible for a system that did this I'd be getting it changed asap.

MonkeyMad

I don't know the T&C for that bank but can easily imagine a system that treats amendments as new requests and processes them immediately and stores for later processing, but requests due to be made that day ie the original S/O have already been buffered at open of business ready for a batch run at the end of day reconciliation. If it is clear that existing S/Os have a lead time to be changed, why would you go to the effort of changing that system? Doesn't cause most people a problem so perhaps its low on the list of things to fix.

Mikeyorks

agrinnall wrote: »

Now given that it's Santander anything is possible, but if I was responsible for a system that did this I'd be getting it changed asap.

To be fair - I was ignoring the fact that both old and new were processed. As I can't (other than that this is Santander) conceive how that could possibly happen.
I was just commenting on the fact that (as DDs) you can't just change a stored payment instruction and assume it's instant.

pmduk

dunstonh wrote: »

The problem with allowing people to change their own standing orders is if they do not know the quirks of the system, they can make mistakes.

External standing orders require 2 days notice to be changed.

Surely it's for banks to make this clear to their customers? I've never been informed of this requirement, although I'm in the fortunate position of not banking with Satandire.

MonkeyMad

Santander's General T&C state S/O are taken at the start of the day on which they had been instructed so to make this change you may have had to do it the day before at the latest.

6.10 Automatic Payment Instructions, such as Direct Debits and standing orders, are usually taken from your account at the beginning of the working day that they are due.

The terms also state that standing order instruction will be taken as having been made on the day they are to be paid. So an amended instruction may also have been paid on Monday because it was received on a working day and that day was also the day for which payment was requested..

I'm not a Santander customer either but it wasn't hard to find.