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

dizzie

I have an old "Alliance and Leicester" business account which was meant to be free banking for life too, and I have received the same letter from Santander as everyone else.

I for one believe that if we do not make a fuss about the broken promise....and end up on monthly charges, then it will only be a matter of time before these are ramped up to less competitive levels.

I also have a business account with Lloyds TSB which was mandatory because we have a mortgage for our business premises with them (but all that does is accept one credit/month in to pay the mortgage which is then debited from the account by the bank). My Lloyds TSB account costs me £5/month

If I get no joy with Santander (which I suspect I will not, but I'm still determined to be one of a few thousand thorns in their sides), I will close my account with them on principal. They have done pretty well out of me since I have tended to let money accumulate in there....so particularly before the January and July tax bills it usually has an extremely healthy balance.

If I go onto the electronic tariff at Lloyds, I could use that for all my automated transactions, and I could also sign up to a new account with the Co-op (free for 18 months, £3month thereafter) to make all my deposits. Then I would have one account that mostly shows my incomings, and one that mostly shows my outgoings, which I don't think the accountant would mind.

Justdesserts

madonnamustache wrote: »

Hi all,

Very disappointed with what Santander is doing. It may be legal, but it's not honest and trustworthy - especially considering the fact that banks are blamed on the financial crisis. How much money is enough for them?

I have been looking at other banks, but really not sure what to go with. HSBC seemed good - until I saw that they charge £6 for incoming bank payments from abroad. So the sender pays, and the recipient pays. With Santander, this was free. Sometimes I receive 3-4 such payments a month, and that would be £24 in fees. Apart from that, I mostly use my business bank account to deposit PayPal and Google Wallet payments, with almost no cheques or cash deposits. So I am reconsidering going with HSBC.

Annoyed.

I can understand you looking around at alternatives but PLEASE don't go withoutmaking a complaint. There is a lot of help on this thread and this is yet another case of banks riding roughshod over customers.

Justdesserts

DruidDonagh wrote: »

Which can be changed.

Legally.

......so long as the changes are fair, in accordance with the Banking Code and do not constitute a breach of contract.

IMO this has yet to be decided. Remember, the banks who thought they could impose unfair personal banking charges and are still paying the price. :T

DruidDonagh

Justdesserts wrote: »

......so long as the changes are fair, in accordance with the Banking Code and do not constitute a breach of contract.

IMO this has yet to be decided. Remember, the banks who thought they could impose unfair personal banking charges and are still paying the price. :T

:rotfl:

If it was against the baking code, the law or whatever other rules and regulations there are, they would not have done it. They cannot afford that. If they do, it would mean the end of the bank, in this case Santander.
And what contract? A bank account is no contract. It is an agreement to a set of T&C. Banks do not use contracts except with their staff. Most, if not all banks are the same and I have banked with a few.

Justdesserts

DruidDonagh wrote: »

:rotfl:

If it was against the baking code, the law or whatever other rules and regulations there are, they would not have done it. They cannot afford that. If they do, it would mean the end of the bank, in this case Santander.
And what contract? A bank account is no contract. It is an agreement to a set of T&C. Banks do not use contracts except with their staff. Most, if not all banks are the same and I have banked with a few.

I repeat my point about the personal banking charges which they have had to refund. They can get things wrong sometimes

A contract exists when an offer is accepted for a consideration, in this case, handing over my money, so banks enter into contracts all the time.

As I have said, this is still to be adjudicated but if we all roll over we only have ourselves to blame.

In the long run, I think we may have to disagree on this one, DruidDonagh, but my hope is that no one is discouraged from registering a complaint if they wish to.

Thrugelmir

madonnamustache wrote: »

Hi all,

Very disappointed with what Santander is doing. It may be legal, but it's not honest and trustworthy - especially considering the fact that banks are blamed on the financial crisis. How much money is enough for them?

Your free banking was paid for by cross subsidy on other products and services. So as transparency becomes the norm. The downside will be cost effective charges on services provided that banks will levy to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. After all it is our pension funds that own the banks.

janusdesign

BusinessIsBusiness wrote: »

Why spend time complaining about something as trivial as this. Instead why not spend that time to write a letter to close the dormant account with the correct account numbers? If you previously asked them to close a current account, they only close the specific accounts you specify, so would leave others, such as a savings account, open, unless you instruct them otherwise..

seriously, who's complaining ?

it never bothered me that I kept on receiving the statements - I left them open for sensible business reasons... well one I could have closed, but i've had the same experience as just desserts when closing an account previously - frankly, it was easier to leave them all open rather than run the risk of Santander messing up the main account.

if they'd been an option to turn to paperless statements for the account... or if Santander had had the basic thought to realise not to send a statement for accounts with no transactions, it would have saved them money.

the point of my comment was not a complaint against Santander, it was merely a jokey response to a post by another user who didn't want us and Santander to waste paper complaining and use emails instead... which on one level I could understand, but on another level seemed very trivial and worthy of a funny response... apologies it is bypassed you.

janusdesign

Justdesserts wrote: »

Sorry, just got back! Post it to the man who wrote to us, i.e. Robin Foale, Managing Director, Santander Business Banking, Bridle Road, Bootle L30 4GB.

Change the wording a bit so it is not a standard letter and keep a copy. You might think it worth sending it recorded delivery!

i'm not actually sure that's correct... I doubt Robin Foale will be in Bootle, he's probably in the South East somewhere..

according to the Santander site, you should write to the following address:-

Complaints
Santander UK plc
PO Box 1125
Bradford BD1 9PG

writing to Bootle will probably work, i'm just trying to highlight what the official address to write to is.

actually, if you go through the site, you can work out what Robin Foale's Santander email address must be - though obviously i'm not going to post it here!

Susievintage

For those of you who read it, this week's "Portrait of the Week" in The Spectator magazine (issue dated 4 August 2012 with "Day of the Drones" cover story, page 7, paragraph 2) mentions our situation:

"Santander, successor to Abbey National, which had offered small businesses free banking 'forever', wrote to 230,000 small businesses telling them that their accounts will cost them at least £7.50 a month."

(To out it in context, the paragraph begins "Business leaders visiting London for the Olympics asked David Cameron what was happened to Britain's economy, according to the FT." It then went on to list shrinking of GDP, HSBC's woes around mis-selling and money laundering, the Santander situation, and house prices falling.)

(I would put a link to the online version, but you can only read the first paragraph and the rest is behind a paywall. But in case you have paid, here's the link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/issues/4-august-2012/portrait-of-the-week)

cashisking1

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