SmartSave account and problems with faster payments in

EdSwippet

I thought I had successfully opened and funded a SmartSave 1 year bond yesterday, but a few hours later I received an email telling me that my payment in had been rejected and would be returned to me (after a delay of some days :-( ). The reason given was

The money you tried to transfer today is in the process of being sent back to you because your name was not quoted in your transaction. This can take a couple of days to reach your account, depending on your bank and will show on your statement as 'Savings Inflow'.

As I had followed SmartSave's payment instructions to the letter when sending money from my First Direct current account, I asked for clarification. The response is this:

The Debtor name came through with a series of number instead of <my real name>, the rest of the details were correct, but unfortunately unless we can see the bank account is in your name we're unable to process the payment.

This doesn't seem to get me any further forwards. All I need to -- and all I can -- set up for a faster payment from First Direct is a destination sort code, destination account name and number, and a limited-length reference. All were correctly given. Whatever this 'Debtor' thing is, I am pretty sure that I have no control over it.

Pending more from SmartSave, can anyone suggest what their problem is, and how one might solve it?

I haven't seen this problem mentioned elsewhere, and presumably other people have successfully funded a new SmartSave account. If you have, was that from First Direct or HSBC, or from another bank?

Descrabled

I made a payment from one of Lloyds Banking Group and it was successful. Visible in the SmartSave account within 2 hours; excellent service.
Suggest the name of the person owning the paying bank account is provided by the bank, as with other faster payments. Suggest you contact HSBC or FD to clarify problem.

EdSwippet

Descrabled wrote: »

I made a payment from one of Lloyds Banking Group and it was successful. Visible in the SmartSave account within 2 hours; excellent service.

Thanks for the confirmation. I too was pretty happy with the way things had gone with SmartSave. Well, until this roadblock.

Descrabled wrote: »

Suggest the name of the person owning the paying bank account is provided by the bank, as with other faster payments. Suggest you contact HSBC or FD to clarify problem.

That's what it appears to be. I've asked First Direct for their take on this, but I'm fearful that it's a simple mismatch between SmartSave's expectation of what faster payments look like and First Direct's implementation of them. In which case I'm at a dead halt, because I don't have any other current accounts.

Weird. I've had this First Direct account for nigh on 30 years and made probably hundreds of electronic payments with it, and never seen this sort of problem before. And with 1.35 million customers, it's not like First Direct is a small or niche banking choice ...

chillibee

I know SmartSave have closed their doors to new customers for now because they were only in a 'beta' state & are now resolving issues (I've not been able to receive a verification email from them despite numerous chats with their online chat people & as such have been stopped from opening an account for now). Hopefully this is one of those issues & it will get resolved for you. Can you get their chat people to add this to their list of issues for resolution?

Grunge

Hi all I took out a SmartSave Savers account, but had lots of problems with them, I put in money ,my bank did all the checks, and it didn't show in my SmartSave account. when I checked this morning with my bank the payment was rejected because the sort code didn't exist. so as the dragons say I'm Out. My alarms bells are ringing loud and clear.

colsten

Grunge wrote: »

Hi all I took out a SmartSave Savers account, but had lots of problems with them, I put in money ,my bank did all the checks, and it didn't show in my SmartSave account. when I checked this morning with my bank the payment was rejected because the sort code didn't exist. so as the dragons say I'm Out. My alarms bells are ringing loud and clear.

Two possible explanations:

1. you provided an incorrect sort code
2. your bank haven't updated their sort code table

There are a number of banks offering the same, or higher, interest rate for a 1 year deposit.

EdSwippet

EdSwippet wrote: »

I've asked First Direct for their take on this, but I'm fearful that it's a simple mismatch between SmartSave's expectation of what faster payments look like and First Direct's implementation of them. In which case I'm at a dead halt, because I don't have any other current accounts.

Just to close out the original issue ... after three messages to First Direct, and three denials back that there was any problem at their end, on the fourth -- and after I had seen the exact same problem with a payment to a different bank -- First Direct finally admitted that my account was not "properly set up" at their end, and fixed something internal to their systems so that it now works as it should.

So, a problem inside First Direct then. Not user-fixable, nor even user-visible without something like this happening, and nothing to do with SmartSave, although they did what they could to help. I have since opened and successfully funded another SmartSave account from my First Direct account. Absolutely no issues now.