Post Office Card Account Statement Refusal

CheshirePhil

Hi Mo-save-perts,

My partner and I have a frustrating issue on which we would be grateful for advice. We are buying a house and the mortgage company underwriters require one final piece of documentation: proof of my partner's child benefit payments. Unfortunately, she doesn't have these paid into her main Nationwide account, but has these paid into a Post Office card account, which she opened when her child was born 14 years ago, and they only issue statements bi-annually, as paper copies in the post.

So, The Post Office are telling us the following:

a. They do not send out pdf copies by email.

b. There is no facility that would allow my partner to go online and print copies

c. they will not send out any form of statement covering the months between two statement dates, prior to the standard up-coming statement date.

So, all they will do is issue a paper copy of the last statement (in our case one dated June 2016) and this will take 7 working days to arrive.

Our problem is two-fold:

1. this statement will only show transactions up to early June 2016, so will not serve as evidence for recent Child Benefit payments to my partner, only evidence that she was receiving them as recently as May!

2. Since the valuation has been done and we are scheduled to exchange tomorrow (22nd Nov) and we need to move in before the end of the month or we are homeless, waiting 7 working days for what would in any case be a six month old statement is no good to us.

This just seems incredible. It is 2016, I can post this question to an internet forum using a touchscreen phone, on which I have apps for various bank accounts, yet The Post Office are telling us the only option is to wait seven working days for a mailed copy of a six month old statement, and that there is simply no possibility of either a more up-to-date statement or of being able to download or get a PDF copy to expedite matters. Every person we have spoken to at The Post Office is adamant that there is and will be no flexibility here, and seem completely unmoved that their inflexibility and 1980s business model could render us homeless.

Can anyone advise us? Any help will be gratefully received.

Thanks
Phil

takman

CheshirePhil wrote: »

Hi Mo-save-perts,

My partner and I have a frustrating issue we would be grateful for advice on. We are buying a house and the mortgage company require one final piece of documentation: proof of my partner's child benefit payments. Unfortunately, she doesn't have these paid into her main Nationwide account, but has these paid into a Post Office card account, which she opened when her child was born 14 years ago, and they only issue statements bi-annually, as paper copies in the post.

So, The Post Office are telling us the following:

a. They do not send out pdf copies by email.

b. There is no facility that would allow my partner to go online and print copies

c. they will not send out any form of statement covering the months between two statement dates, prior to the standard up-coming statement date.

So, all they will do is issue a paper copy of the last statement (in our case one dated June 2016) and this will take 7 working days to arrive.

Our problem is two-fold:

1. this statement will only show transactions up to early June 2016, so will not serve as evidence for recent Child Benefit payments to my partner, only evidence that she was receiving them as recently as May!

2. Since the valuation has been done and we are scheduled to exchange tomorrow (22nd Nov) and we need to move in before the end of the month or we are homeless, waiting 7 working days for what would in any case be a six month old statement is no good to us.

This just seems incredible. It is 2016, I can post this question to an internet forum using a touchscreen phone, on which I have apps for various bank accounts, yet The Post Office are telling us the only option is to wait seven working days for a mailed copy of a six month old statement, and that there is simply no possibility of either a more up-to-date statement or of being able to download or get a PDF copy to expedite matters. Every person we have spoken to at The Post Office is adamant that there is and will be no flexibility here, and seem completely unmoved that their inflexibility and 1980s business model could render us homeless.

Can anyone advise us? Any help will be gratefully received.

Thanks
Phil

Exactly it is 2016 so why is she getting child benefit pain into an account that offers no online access and more importantly no interest?. This account is aimed at people who don't have a bank account but still need to receive and access benefits.

The first thing i would do if i were you is to ring the child benefit enquiries telephone number and change the payments to a more suitable account. Then while your on the phone to them ask if they can provide any proof of the payments being made. This seems to be the only option.

CheshirePhil

hmmm, thanks... I think.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Of course, we did not need to post to MSE forums to know that we would not be in this predicament now had she moved the CB payments over to her main current account some time ago. But, well, here we are, so thanks for pointing out what we now know only too well and doing so in a way that doesn't so much seek to help but rather seeks to establish that we are to blame for the predicament in which we find ourselves.

Maybe we should have anticipated this issue, but we a. didn't ever think about CB payments in relation to applying for a mortgage (which is something we're doing for the first time), and b. never expected an account could be as resolutely basic and inflexible as the Post Office Account is.

Until this came up it really was way down on the list of things one thinks about, because there is, I believe, a reasonable expectation that any account would be more flexible about statement issuing than this one has turned out to be.

eskbanker

Is the value of the child benefit critical to the mortgage calculation, i.e. would a slightly smaller mortgage based on a lower household income be workable - presumably the income will only be payable for another couple of years anyway?

takman

CheshirePhil wrote: »

hmmm, thanks... I think.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Of course, we did not need to post to MSE forums to know that we would not be in this predicament now had she moved the CB payments over to her main current account some time ago. But, well, here we are, so thanks for pointing out what we now know only too well and doing so in a way that doesn't so much seek to help but rather seeks to establish that we are to blame for the predicament in which we find ourselves.

Maybe we should have anticipated this issue, but we a. didn't ever think about CB payments in relation to applying for a mortgage (which is something we're doing for the first time), and b. never expected an account could be as resolutely basic and inflexible as the Post Office Account is.

Until this came up it really was way down on the list of things one thinks about, because there is, I believe, a reasonable expectation that any account would be more flexible about statement issuing than this one has turned out to be.

I wasn't implying that you should have considered the statement issue when applying for a mortgage, I wouldn't have even thought about it myself.

But one thing I would never do is let any money get paid into an account that I couldn't immediately transfer into an interest paying account.

If you think I'm just taking advantage of hindsight then I'll give you some future advice. Sit down and do a review of every account you have. If it doesn't pay any interest then ditch it and transfer the money to an account that does. Make sure all your money is getting the best interest rate it can.

CheshirePhil

Thanks. Yes, that will have to be the conversation we have with the mortgage broker when they're back in the office first thing tomorrow. I can't believe it makes enough difference to be bothered with, but post '08 it is amazing what difference small amounts seem to make.