Santander - Bizzare !

yangptangkipperbang

I have had a Santander Online eSaver account for several years (various Issues), mainly to drip feed into various regular savers.
Last week I "upgraded" to Iss 5, did it all online, closed Issue 4, transferred balance - Santander confirmed by post - faultless.
UNTIL - today.
Transferred £40 to my First Direct current account to verify everything OK and to get Faster Payments system "primed" - seemed to go fine, got SMS from santander, etc, etc. This afternoon I get a message to phone Santander about my transfer, log in first to see what is happening, find I am locked out.
Phone Santander - then spend 15 minutes on the phone with a young lady who keeps telling me the "system is slow" and switching me over to music - 4 times.
After going through innumerable security questions she finally unblocks my account. I then ask why it was locked out in the first place - now it starts getting totally bizarre !!
I am told it is because it is a new account and that I have never done that type of transfer to a "strange" account before - it is classified as possibly fraudulent - so the account is blocked. When I say that it has never happened before with my previous accounts and transfers to FD, she says it is "new".
I then asked her to confirm that because I opened a new account with Santander (having had previous eSavers and having a current ISA) then the first time I try to take money out of this account it is classified as potential fraud and the account is locked !
She agreed ! When I said that this was crazy, she said that if I didn't like it she would put in a "dissatisfaction report" (or something like that) for me.

So it seems that Santander now classify the first attempt to withdraw money from your own account as "potential fraud".................. no wonder I see so many complaints about them.............

zerog

Happened to me with Lloyds last year. But just to be safe I think I'll have to forego the 0.1% extra interest on the issue 5 until I have time to sort out any problems.

Gromitt

Had the same with Halifax. Stuck 10K in a online saver at 2.8% as a temporary storage place and when I tried to transfer it to another bank, they delayed the payment for 'fraud investigations'. At least they didn't cancel my internet banking though! (and it was released the next day).

yangptangkipperbang

UPDATE

1.Tried to log on at about 9 o'clock last night - still locked out :mad:
2. Ring number on "locked out" page - get message telling me that this is the wrong number - but as they are such nice people they will transfer me to the right number :mad::mad:
3. Get message on "right" number telling me that the line which (it says !) is open until 11pm is now shut :mad::mad::mad:
4. Spend another 15 minutes on the phone this morning and finally get account unlocked .....................................