MSE News: Santander to charge for 'free' business accounts

JuicyJesus

21Twinkle wrote: »

Typical Spanish move - after spending the morning stealing our cod - they spend their lunchtime drinking Riohja - then have a few hours of siesta - before trying to con us hard working brits out of our meagre savings - by illegally changing the fixed T&C of our bank accounts.

I recommend that we all pull our funds out of this joke of a spanish bank....

It's not illegal, it's not a con and the T&Cs aren't fixed.

They have changed their terms, as they (and any other bank or business) are entitled to by law. If you do not accept this, you can move your banking elsewhere.

cheapread

Cheques are old fashioned like faxes nowadays -albeit they got a stay of execution recently - I can understand why banks would charge for processing them - but 'Faster Payments' and BACS are virtually cost free in terms of transactions - its fast money into Santander's coffers, interest free, for them to do what they will with it...

prowla

I have one of the Abbey "free forever" accounts which I took out whilst running my business.

The company has now stopped trading and I need to make it dormant as it's had no turnover in 2 years and I've just filed nil accounts.

I've had a couple of hundred sitting in it as a slush fund, but I guess I'll take it out and close the account.

I'm upset the account is going and that the original promise is being reneged, but I'm not using it so it's not really affecting me.

But who ever expected honesty from a banker?

Paulgonnabedebtfree

There has been some mention of Santander's right to change their T & Cs - a right that broadly agree with. However, what seems to be overlooked is that the promise of free business banking forever is something that supercedes the T & Cs as the word "forever" was used in the advertising. If the initial advertising had been honest and not used the word "forever", it's likely that I would not have opened the account. Alerations of T & Cs is fine - within the umbrella term of free business banking forever. However even such alterations should be not too unreasonable so as to cripple a free banking forever account into an unusable condition. It is my belief that this would also probably be classed as "unfair" in banking terms. I'm not jumping. If they start charging me, a separate complaint will go in for every £7.50 charge until this is sorted one way or another. That could end up being a lot of cases. Also, it occurs to me that I also have a business reserve account with them that is rarely used. I'm unclear as to whether they want to charge for that too. If they do, that one will go anyway. It's had £1 in it for the past year without any movement.
Santander want people to jump ship. If half the people go, that will reduce their overheads and will be less complaints to deal with.
The lead in to this article states 230,000 customers affected. 230,000 times £7.50 a month (assuming no other charges) comes to about £1.725 million a month.

prowla

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

There has been some mention of Santander's right to change their T & Cs - a right that broadly agree with. However, what seems to be overlooked is that the promise of free business banking forever is something that supercedes the T & Cs as the word "forever" was used in the advertising. If the initial advertising had been honest and not used the word "forever", it's likely that I would not have opened the account. Alerations of T & Cs is fine - within the umbrella term of free business banking forever. However even such alterations should be not too unreasonable so as to cripple a free banking forever account into an unusable condition. It is my belief that this would also probably be classed as "unfair" in banking terms. I'm not jumping. If they start charging me, a separate complaint will go in for every £7.50 charge until this is sorted one way or another. That could end up being a lot of cases. Also, it occurs to me that I also have a business reserve account with them that is rarely used. I'm unclear as to whether they want to charge for that too. If they do, that one will go anyway. It's had £1 in it for the past year without any movement.
Santander want people to jump ship. If half the people go, that will reduce their overheads and will be less complaints to deal with.
The lead in to this article states 230,000 customers affected. 230,000 times £7.50 a month (assuming no other charges) comes to about £1.725 million a month.

That's right, and basically they are saying that anything they say cannot be trusted.

uksavergirl

HSBC's charging structure for business banking is way more complicated than Santander and we worked out would cost us a lot more in the long run. We opened our Santander account in November, so were not sold the free forever product, although we do have 18 months free banking and I am wondering whether that will be affected.

emulsionking

The only people making any money from this is Santander as a BIZ account holder Free would mean Free in my book. with very little deposits and debits each month as a sole trader I see no gain whatsoever in this charge. I feel aggrieved and have written in to complain the more the merrier make them listen.

It looks like they could be making £1.7million a month on this lower charge if they have 230000 customers

jap200

Am I the only one not to have received a letter? I opened a Santander 'Free Forever' business account in May last year for my new limited company. I've not heard a dicky bird about this at all except on this site!

Yorksport

Some really useful posts. I'm another low volume account holder - virtually all electronic payments in and out so wouldn't consider paying. My guess is that they are floating this to see how many account holders actually move. If there is enough fuss the implementation date will keep moving back so press ahead with complaints/publicity. Ultimately if I receive the 60 days notice I will transfer as pretty well all the banks offer free banking for a period or I may try running it through my free personal account. It's easy to switch and notify clients of a new sort code and account number.

CathyS

No you're not the only one! I am waiting for my letter so I can start doing something about it too.

I have spoken to HSBC this morning and will find that their cheque limits will probably cost me more than Santander's £7.50 pm -(