Santander to double 123 Lite fee and shake up current account cashback - MSE News

wiseonesomeofthetime

NottinghamKnight said:

Viz top tip, many might try to look down the back of the sofa where there might be more than 56p lurking....

No cash around my house.

Have not used it for months!

Surely gonna get caught out one day.

garmeg

colsten said:

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

Nebulous2 said:

I’ve just had my first payment under the new rates. £6.08 less the £2 fee, £4.08 net. I was getting between £8 and £9 net before. In my two months without council tax I’ll be just about breaking even. 

This is why I opted to pay my Council Tax over 12 months.

If you pay the CT in 10 instalments, you get your cashback earlier.

But you may go over the £5 cap?

The 1% band covers Council tax bills, Mobile and home phone bills, broadband and paid-for TV packages so I am getting close to £5 when spreading council tax over 12 months and would exceed it if spreading over 10.

12 months CT: £220 council tax + £110 Sky + £120 EE + £13 Vodafone + £16 ID Mobile =£480 = £4.80 cashback
10 months CT: £264 council tax + £110 Sky + £120 EE + £13 Vodafone + £16 ID Mobile =£524 = £5.00 capped cashback

Not a lot of difference for me but could be higher for others.

colsten

Ah yes, I had forgotten about the cap. This might be an issue for some.

wiseonesomeofthetime

garmeg said:

12 months CT: £220 council tax + £110 Sky + £120 EE + £13 Vodafone + £16 ID Mobile =£480 = £4.80 cashback
10 months CT: £264 council tax + £110 Sky + £120 EE + £13 Vodafone + £16 ID Mobile =£524 = £5.00 capped cashback

Some eye-watering monthly outgoings there!

In comparison, over 12 months, I have £91 Council Tax + £28.99 PlusNet (Sky cancelled this month) = £119.99 = £1.20

The account is only just about viable for me now, but I shall be keeping it as I am happy with the way my budget portfolio works.

With prices only going to rise in 2021, the 123 Lite should be retained, unless they further increase the monthly fee.

dumpty

When the cashback rates changed, they only paid me 1% on my electricity payment to SSE, instead of 2%. I phoned them up and they sent me a letter saying that the correct cashback had been paid. I went back to them and queried it with them again, and after 3 attempts at trying to get this sorted out, I received a callback from the complaints department saying the the Direct Debit Code number that SSE are using for the payment is being identified as a "Communications" payment, and hence being paid at 1% and not 2%. I was told that I would have to contact SSE and get them to change their DD Identification to "Energy" for Santander to pay me cashback at 2%. I've never heard anything so ridiculous!! Why should I have to get SSE to change the coding on their DD Identifier? Surely I'm not the only person affected by this? As far as I am concerned, Santander have said that they will pay me 2% cashback on Electricity payments, and it's up to them to sort out how they achieve that. Has anyone else come across this problem?

eskbanker

dumpty said:

Has anyone else come across this problem?

Yes, this thread was started about the same issue last month, although the suggestion then was that it was Santander doing the erroneous classifying rather than SSE: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6234164/santander-123-account-problems/p1