Negative experience with Santander.

anotherquestion

Hi folks,

I have had a 123 account with Santander for a number of years, and recently opened a new ISA with Tesco bank.

I needed to transfer funds from Santander to Tesco to fund the ISA so attempted to do that today, I went through the whole process for anyone who knows Santander's procedure, setting up a new payee and three or four warning screens about scams as I proceeded through the payment process, also an OTP to my mobile, hit the send button  and got a message saying it didn't go through and got totally locked  out of online banking.

I then had to spend up to an hour on the phone to Santander, and passed through to the Fraud department of Santander, who after checking my security went on to check the validity of the Tesco account I had set up,  after explaining I had set it up online, that I had received a confirmation letter, and was able to log in to Tesco and view the account online, the fraud department lady came across as still not convinced, asking if I was coerced into transferring this money etc 

To be honest I was getting a bit distressed at this point as I was beginning to question the validity of the Tesco account myself such was her forcefulness in putting across her point (even though I had all the evidence that it was a genuine Tesco account)

it was then made clear to me that she would release the money but it would not be retrievable in any event, I did get the impression that Santander were really covering themselves, and really it was more the banks side they were thinking of rather than me.

Anyway the money has showed up in my Tesco account and all is well in that regard.

Now my partner has to do the same thing as she has just opened an ISA with Tesco as well, and we are not looking forward to a repeat performance where she will probably get locked out of her online banking account as well, and another lengthy wait and call to the Santander fraud department.

Don't get me wrong, Iike all of you I appreciate a bank having stringent security checks (though Santander seems to have relaxed its login procedure recently) 
But I think it can reach a point where it is a total inconvenience for the genuine customers and can even be distressing.

Some might say to me, the bank were only doing their job, what if someone had hacked your account and was attempting to transfer funds out of it, which is a valid point, but if you yourself want to transfer funds from one bank to another, do you really want to be locked out of online banking, the transfer not going through and then having to spend up to an hour to the banks fraud department, explaining yourself?

binao

The banks can not win.

A local Santander customer was scammed out of 5k. The customer was warned but insisted on the transaction going ahead.

The customer then expected Santander to get the money back or reimburse, when it turned out to be a scam.

I'm with Santander and prefer accepting some inconvenience rather then losing my dosh.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

My bank contacts me occasionally, as well as my credit card company and my proper building society about transfers etc. Never had a problem!

IvanOpinion

As someone who banks with Santander, I am glad to hear that they are taking security seriously.

forgotmyname

Get a TSB account instead.  Account locked even though the login and password and 2 factor security code
were all correct.  Unlocked over the phone and tried to transfer £500 again and locked again.

Went into the local branch and tried to do the transfer in front of the manager account locked again. He
phones and the person on the phone said goto the local branch... He had to explain he was the
manager and gave them some details in private. Still failed.

Had to do a convoluted payment by debit card instead of a simple money transfer.