Santander trying to steal £14,200 from me

Azelphur

Leebertine wrote: »

Jesus. Sometimes I wonder why I cone here... some peoples reactions to the OP have been just ridiculous. Yes, before anybody says anything I HAVE read the whole thread.

I'm not taking sides here, just stating that the way people have acted toward each other in this thread shows me one of the major problems with our society right now.

Yea, unfortunately on threads like this you always get a few people who have nothing useful to contribute. It's ok though, I've had some really useful posts that have helped me in this situation, so it's worth all the bad ones. Gonna try a written complaint to Santander soon and see if I get anywhere, I also got the FOS papers through today.

nelly12

Azelphur wrote: »

Yea, unfortunately on threads like this you always get a few people who have nothing useful to contribute. It's ok though, I've had some really useful posts that have helped me in this situation, so it's worth all the bad ones. Gonna try a written complaint to Santander soon and see if I get anywhere, I also got the FOS papers through today.

here we go again. You've gone from being unemployed to having several thousand pounds sloshing around in your account. This was obviously viewed by the bank as highly suspicious/potentially fraudulent and triggered their fraud policies. Quite rightly at branch level they would know nothing. However they possibly could have handled an irate and screaming customer in a better way. I think one possible mistake was the title of the thread but you did acknowledge that earlier. As i said earlier good luck with the trading, any trading is risky whatever the commodity is.:)

grumbler

nelly12 wrote: »

... I think one possible mistake was the title of the thread...

As some other experienced people working for banks and passed all assessments confirmed,

meer53 wrote: »

...there is no timescale for an investigation, it's however long it takes.

The thread is now 15 days old.

I wonder if any point exists when a reasonable suspension for investigation becomes a blatant theft per se.

nelly12

grumbler wrote: »

As some other experienced people working for banks and passed all assessments confirmed,

The thread is now 15 days old.

I wonder if any point exists when a reasonable suspension for investigation becomes a blatant theft per se.

Grumbler, you've nothing much useful to say on this thread, you cut and paste missing pertinent parts of peoples replies!

An investigation will take as long as the transaction chain takes to investigate. The longer it goes on does lend to the theory that there is some dirty money involved, it may well not be this transaction and this could be the last in a long sequence. However someone does need to put it out there that the OP could lose some or all of the disputed amount through no fault of his own with no comeback against his bank!

grumbler

Thank you for confirming that they are free to keep conducting the investigation for years and this still will not constitute theft.

Luckily the OP was able to withdraw most of (all?) his own money despite some people saying that it was impossible.

nelly12

grumbler wrote: »

Thank you for confirming that they are free to keep conducting the investigation for years and this still will not constitute theft.

Luckily the OP was able to withdraw most of (all?) his own money despite some people saying that it was impossible.

from memory he got about half the money but not what appears to be a single transaction for circ £7k.

FYI: once the bank identifies something as suspicious then the police would be notified to conduct a criminal investigation, so it could be out of the Banks hands by now? In that instance is the bank still going to accused of theft by you?????? No! Exactly so stop winding people up!

grumbler

OK, can I ask then whether there is any deadline for "identifying" and handing the case over to the police or closing the investigation otherwise and apologizing?
Forget about apologizing. I know I am dreaming. Most likely they will just bury the case by closing the account, that they can do without any excuses.

nelly12

grumbler wrote: »

OK, can I ask then whether there is any deadline for "identifying" and handing the case over to the police or closing the investigation otherwise and apologizing?
Forget about apologizing. I know I am dreaming. Most likely they will just bury the case by closing the account, that they can do without any excuses.

so Grumbler, tell me what you and your humble opinion think would be a reasonable timescale for a bank/police force to respond?

At the end of the day if it's gone on this long then something is clearly wrong. If everything had been non fraudulent then these thinks clear up within a couple of days. Your point?

DevCoder

grumbler wrote: »

OK, can I ask then whether there is any deadline for "identifying" and handing the case over to the police or closing the investigation otherwise and apologizing?
Forget about apologizing. I know I am dreaming. Most likely they will just bury the case by closing the account, that they can do without any excuses.

The deadline is as long as it takes for the MLRO's (money laundering officers) and the relevant external parties (police, financial crime units etc) to be happy one way or the other. The penalties under the ML Regulation (2007) are severe enough that everyone makes sure of their position.

Azelphur

Got my new business account through from Lloyds TSB today. Back to work for me , yay!.

I contacted Lloyds TSB about their policies, explained what had happened to me with Santander, they told me that they would never do anything like that, and their policies are to give 30 days before any freeze is placed on account, and that they will always contact me with any issues before placing freezes. They were quite clear that their policies are totally different to Santander and that they wouldn't be doing anything like that to me. Much nicer!

The money I got out of Santander so far is just the uncontested funds, so they still have £7200 (Actually £7400 because of an errant bank transfer), but I still hope to get it back.

grumbler speaks sense, my issue with the bank isn't the freezing of the disputed funds, it's the freezing of my entire bank account with no notice, misinformation, lies, threats, and generally extremely poor customer support they've given. I'd hardly say I was screaming, irate yes, but justifiably so. They told me they were taking my money indefinitely and that I had no chance in hell of getting it back. How would you react if someone stole every penny you owned and they told you very clearly that you wern't going to be getting it back? I think most people would be screaming in that scenario, and I was pretty restrained (and continue to be) considering the absolutely ridiculous way the bank is handling this situation. Just to be clear on this, so far we've had...

4 x Promise it will be resolved within 48 hours
3 x All your money is the proceeds of crime and we're taking every penny you own and you have no options to get it back
2 x Promise it will be resolved by close of business
2 x We've lost the evidence you sent
1 x You didn't send any evidence (I've now emailed them the evidence as well as handing it in the branch in person)
1 x Lying to a police detective (and subsequently to me)

These responses have come from all over the bank, I've been in contact with Fraud, Complaints as well as the Branch staff, and I've had nothing but lies and misinformation everywhere, the dispute here is over the extremely poor to the point of being arguably illegal handling of my money and this situation. The behaviour the bank is exhibiting is entirely wrong, and entirely unreasonable. You don't continually lie to and abuse your customers, that's not the way to do business.