old building society account

mikey57

I have just found our old National and Provincial Building Society instant reserve account book. There is a reasonable amount of money in this but was last accessed in 1991. I realise the building society was taken over by someone sometime ago. Is there any chance of getting this money back now?

castle96

there is a financial institution 'tracing' service that I have used (free), struggling to remember the name/site. Someone will come along............

droopsnoot

A quick search says it was taken over by Abbey National, who are now Santander, so it would be worth checking them out.

xylophone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_National

http://www.santander.co.uk/uk/savings/savings-faqs re tracking down old account.

Gurberly

Lost accounts
http://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/aboutus.htm


Free service run by the British Bankers' Association


Dave

AR1939

I also found a savings book and have been trying to get my money back from Abbey National and now Santander who took it over and claim I must have closed it but have shown no proof. It has been a few years and I am now in the middle of a case where I have taken santander to small claims court. Its a battle be prepared!

AR1939

Mikey57...following on from my last post I lost the case against Santander as they claimed I must have received the money when N&P converted to Abbey National. Please make sure you have a solid case as now they are claiming costs from me and all this time I have never received proof of the money. so be aware Santander are ruthless and don't care about consumers..they threw lots of legal jargon and never even looked at the account.

Malthusian

You'd have to care an awful lot about consumers to pay them money which you already paid them.

Abbey National / Santander would I believe have been required to keep the record of them having paid you for five years after whenever they closed the account. After that the onus would be on the investor to prove they are still owed money.

mikey57

I am sorry to hear that AR1939.
I used the links above and contacted Santander....they also said there was no account that matched ours so I did not follow it up any further as I thought it might be fruitless. I will probably leave it at that now.

AR1939

yep it was brutal they are vultures and are known for this but its just not worth the stress..

fwor

The problem is that there can be explanations for savings books that "just stop" many years ago that do not involve the company owing anyone any money.

The most obvious is that the passbook is (temporarily) lost. The account owner applies for another one and continues to use it, closes the account and withdraws the money - and eventually throws away the passbook that shows the account being closed.

And then the lost passbook is found, years later - and it appears to show that money is owed. That's why banks and building societies don't just pay up in cases like this, without further evidence. It's not brutal or vulture-like - it's just sound business practice, to avoid giving money to people that you don't owe money to.