Nightmare with Santander!

spaulding82

My FIL has a bank account and credit card with santander. When he sadly passed away my husband went into the brach to give them a copy of the death certificate and filled out the admin for is accounts form they require people to fill out. a couple weeks later they sent him a cheque for FIL bank balance and a letter saying he still owed for the credit card and was told the credit card department has been informed so no intrest will be applied.

while waiting for probate to be completed santander kept phoning us requesting the money, I explained they will have to wait until probate was finished. A couple weeks later the courts sent through the probate paperwork)so we went ahead with paying all his debts.

and then came the Santander I've never encountered such non-sense from any company like I did with them.Finding his latest credit card statement was impossible, Im not sure if he had it all sent by email or if it shredded it,

First of all, I phone their probate and berveament team,they said they couldnt help me so I was transfered to collections (but his account was never pass due), I told the lady I wanted to pay off his debt since he has passed away, but she said "without his permission I cant speak with you!". I wanted to say !!!!!!? do you want me to send you a ouiji board in the post?"come to find out, on their systems, it doesn't even show that my FIL has passed away.

She said the account has been sold to a 3rd party company, which I assume is a probate company. When I asked for their details, she got really cocky and said "telling you that would be breaking the law, theres such a thing called data protection,so I cant tell you anything unless i have permission from the account holder", at this point I was almost in a rage, she was already told he passed away!

So she puts me on hold,comes back then she says "i can take a payment from you, but I cant tell you what the balance is", so I said, take a payment from me? you just told me the account was sold to a 3rd party!", in the end I just hung up on her.

My husband went into the branch to get it sorted, and surprise surprise, they stated they dont have a copy of his death certificate,even though they photocopied it a month before,and they sent a letter confirming everything, and also sent my husband a cheque.

So now my husband has to go into a branch AGAIN to reshow them the death certificate and a copy of my husband probate letter from the courts.

All we want to do it pay them their money and they dont want to take it!

spaulding82

editing sorted in initial post :-)

ValHaller

You need to stop dealing with these people face to face or on the phone and write a letter, keeping a copy. You do not need to write out the whole sequence of your visits and calls. Just refer to probate and request the up to date statement so that the account can be settled. Ball is in their court - any games by them only cause them problems. (Short letter, use paragraphs.)

troubleinparadise

I think GM4Less just means could you break down the text into a few more paragraphs - one long block of text is difficult to read especially on a small screen!

I'm afraid Santander were the one company that I had problems with - "left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing" challenges, and sadly staff don't have the full training - or it seems even a central advice point to either find out for themselves or send you to!

And the departments don't seem to interface very well, so a death certificate/Probate certificate sent to the bereavement dept doesn't work with the Deeds department, and so on.

Keep at it - they will get there in the end (be warned, that can be many weeks), but more hassle for you just when you've got enough on your plate as it is... :eek:

TonyMMM

You can also point out to them that the Data Protection Act (surely the most misquoted piece of legislation ever) only applies to LIVING individuals - so is completely irrelevant here.

spaulding82

Its just very annoying. With MBNA it was as easy as phoning them,telling them I want to pay off a credit card on a account for someone who passed away,and giving them the card number.
5 minutes tops on the phone with them.

Before probate was sent from the courts, Santander kept phoning up requesting their money. But when I phone them,they don't want to take it.

Within 15 minutes I literally was transfered 8 times,spoke with 8 differant people, and each of them said I need to speak with the same department that transfered me to them in the first place.

As Val suggested,I'm going to send a letter, (recorded signed for) and if they don't reply to it and give us the information we need to pay it off, then I guess they don't get their money. I'm not going to keep chasing them down trying to give it to them. Balls going to be in their court.
My FIL,The cardholder passed away, you would think they would be more understandable and not get all cocky with me

cheers everyone and sorry about the long (un-paragraphed) post initially. I was angry and typing too fast to remember to seperate paragraph lol

getmore4less

have you filled in the form yet


http://www.santander.co.uk/csgs/StaticBS?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1223429884356&cachecontrol=immediate&ssbinary=true&maxage=3600



edit: thanks for the reformat, cleaned up my post

ponbeam

It appears that various issues have happened here with teams not communicating with each other and it would appear at first glance the death was not registered correctly in the first place.
I reccomend you make a complaint about all these issues as the way you were treated at this difficult time is absolutely disgraceful.

getmore4less

Not a good idea to deal with branches of santander, many were something else before(A&L abbey,...) and often get things wrong, never passing on docs.

Best to follow procedure use the official form posted.

They can still mess stuff up, they are a nightmare.

We gave up in the end tryng to recover £30 of charges.

spaulding82

getmore4less wrote: »

have you filled in the form yet


http://www.santander.co.uk/csgs/StaticBS?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1223429884356&cachecontrol=immediate&ssbinary=true&maxage=3600



edit: thanks for the reformat, cleaned up my post

Yep that form was filled out when he first notified the branch,this was early december time I think. When he submitted the form, they gave him his fathers bank balance via cheque a few weeks later and then sent him a letter confirming all of their departments including creditcards are notified
which obviously they didnt do.

We just really need to get this paid as he is administrator ,and don't have time to send out letters and wait for them to get off their asses and do their job properly!

motherofstudents

I know it doesn't help you but I had very similar problems with Santander. Took death certificate in told to go back in two weeks later and was told they couldn't deal with it as they needed the death certificate. They were really hopeless. We got there in the end but you just don't need all the hassle at a time like that.