treatment received from Santander

jimbo49

my parents had a joint 123 account with Santander. unfortunately, they both caught stomack illnesses and were admitted into hospital where they both managed to contract Covid19. mum survived but my father passed away. i had permission to sort out all of his finances and had to deal with Santander. what an absolute nightmare! i managed to get the joint account swapped into my mum's name only and set up Internet Banking for her with a new username and password. as i'm sure everyone is aware, the interest rates on the 123 account have been reduced and reduced until they are not worth very much as well as fees been increased. they also only pay out on the first certain amount, giving nothing on the rest in the account while still having the use of it all.
anyway, i thought it would be a better option to transfer some of the money from this account into a new, 1 year fixed account and set one up at a recommended bank given by Martin. when i tried to transfer money from the Santander account, things went completely pear shaped. i logged into the account using the details i had set up the internet banking with and proceeded to follow the on-screen instructions. bear in mind that unless Santander has a camera in my house, it had no idea it was me and not my mum who was carrying out the transaction. all was going fine, i answered yes each time i was asked by Santander if i wanted to continue the transaction and with the amount specified when, suddenly, without any warning, everything stopped and i found that Santander had not just blocked the transaction but had blocked the account completely! that meant that not just the transaction had ceased but there was no way to get monies out to pay bills, buy food, anything. with my mum being in her 90's, housebound, crippled, this was not good at all.
i contacted Santander and was told that i had to perform certain tasks to just be able to speak to the correct dept but it still took over 2 weeks before the block was lifted. they ignored the fact that without access to the account she had no income and then insisted that i get Power of Attorney to continue being able to use the account on her behalf (ignored the fact that, as far as everyone was concerned it was mum doing the transaction when the account was blocked) and could NOT guarantee that the same thing wouldn't happen if a large amount transaction was attempted in the future.
now, i appreciate that all banks need to be wary of fraud and that they dont want to be held liable if money goes missing but to be unable to say that an account wouldn't be blocked because it didn't like monies being moved doesn't seem right to me. it seems, more likely, that Santander was interested in not getting itself in a row with the FCA or whichever financial watchdog.
since this episode took place, i have been too worried that there would be a repeat of the account blocking to attempt moving money to another bank. this has meant that my mum is getting no interest paid on money over the Santander limit and the banks recommended by Martin have now ceased those fixed rate accounts. Santander has gained out of this because they still have access to the money, just as before while paying nothing out!
in it's generosity, Santander paid my mum the princely sum of £30 for denying her access to her own account, own money and preventing her from moving any of it to gain a bit of interest! what a way to treat customers!
i'd welcome some comments on the way Santander behaved and the best way to be able to move money without having them block the account again!
also, if i have posted in the wrong place, please move it and let me know

Exiled_Tyke

Why don't you simply choose a current account for your Mum with another bank. The new bank should handle the transfer and leave little room for Santander to meddle. 

Alexland

Sorry to hear about your father. If your mother does need this help it would probably be best for her to register you as lasting power of attorney over her affairs now. You would then be operating in a recognised capacity. Unfortunately old people do get targeted for fraud, even from their own family, so hopefully you can understand why banks need to work to a set of rules.

https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

eskbanker

There are several separate issues at play here.

Santander are quite correct that if the account holder wishes someone else to manage her accounts for her then power of attorney is the most commonly accepted route to achieve this, although there are others, so, if she's happy for you to look after her money for her then this needs to be formalised for the protection of all parties concerned.

The issue of blocking a large transaction is far from unique to Santander, although they do seem to be quite zealous in their approach to this.  As they've told you, they can't commit in advance to allowing large (or indeed any) transactions through without explicit authorisation from the account-holder or their (formal) representative, so it's reasonable to set expectations appropriately there.

Blocking the entire account rather than just the specific transaction is unusual, but (separately from putting individual large transactions on hold) banks can and do block accounts where they're suspicious, as a result of needing to comply with anti money laundering regulations, although this doesn't mean that you or her are actually suspected of money-laundering as such!

Once you have the power of attorney then you'll need to get it registered with Santander and you'll then be able to manage her money there, although this doesn't necessarily mean that you'd be able to open new accounts elsewhere for her....

k12479

jimbo49 said:

I'd welcome some comments on the way Santander behaved...

Exactly as they should have. They've prevented someone who isn't authorised from accessing and making transactions from your mother's account. The system worked as it's supposed to.

xylophone

They've prevented someone who isn't authorised from accessing and making transactions from your mother's account. 

Yes but in this case, mother could have been in her son's home and using his computer (using her internet access codes) to send money from the Santander current account to the new savings account - there was no way in which Santander could have known that she was not present.

Therefore the account and transaction were not blocked on this basis?

It is more likely that either the OTP process failed or that because there was a large sum being moved, an anti money laundering/anti fraud algorithm was triggered?

bowlhead99

xylophone said:

They've prevented someone who isn't authorised from accessing and making transactions from your mother's account. 

Yes but in this case, mother could have been in her son's home and using his computer (using her internet access codes) to send money from the Santander current account to the new savings account - there was no way in which Santander could have known that she was not present.

Therefore the account and transaction were not blocked on this basis?

It is more likely that either the OTP process failed or that because there was a large sum being moved, an anti money laundering/anti fraud algorithm was triggered?

Well as you say, they didn't know she wasn't present, but something tripped at Santander to prompt them to query it, and the person trying to make the payment did not succeed in making the payment. The person who had tried to make the payment was prevented from doing so. They complained, and it turned out they were not a person with authority to transact on the account, and it took a long time for the person who did have authority (the mum) to get her access back, because she was not really capable of doing what she needed to.

In this scenario, I would look at it from Santander's perspective, the end justified the means - because a person who didn't have any authority to transact on the account was prevented from accessing the account and unable to quickly regain access.  If my mum has online only access to something and doesn't understand how it works and is not capable of using the computer, making phone calls and writing letters to sort out the access issues, and I abuse her trust and steal her access to transfer money around, it would be a good thing that Santander temporarily intervene and block the access. Santander and other banks do allow people to operate the accounts of others through powers of attorney, if that is something that's wanted; they have a standard process.

In this scenario, Santander made a token goodwill gesture to pay out £30 ,despite their system functioning effectively to get in the way of an unauthorised person using someone else's credentials. It's true that they would not have known it was Jimbo using the account if they had not blocked the transaction causing the issue to 'blow up'. But does that mean they should just always let everything through and presume it is always an authorised person and will never be Jimbo or a fraudster? I don't think it does. Perhaps they prefer to have their systems err on the side of caution resulting in occasional 'inconvenience' payments, than have to make big compensation payments when a fraudster drains an account with ensuing bad publicity. 

xylophone

But does that mean they should just always let everything through and presume it is always an authorised person

I don't think I said that they should.

My comment was merely on the mechanics of what appears to have happened.

colsten

xylophone said:

They've prevented someone who isn't authorised from accessing and making transactions from your mother's account. 

Yes but in this case, mother could have been in her son's home and using his computer (using her internet access codes) to send money from the Santander current account to the new savings account - there was no way in which Santander could have known that she was not present.

Therefore the account and transaction were not blocked on this basis?

It is more likely that either the OTP process failed or that because there was a large sum being moved, an anti money laundering/anti fraud algorithm was triggered?

Imagine the uproar if a bank said "we thought it was the 90 year old account holder who had never had online banking before who was now using online banking to transfer a lot of  money" when a scamster fraudulently transferred his mother's savings to another account. Sons or daughters of account holders don't have special dispensation, as some mothers do have have sons or daughters who would defraud them. Not that Santander knew it was the son or daughter who was trying to move the money, as the OP rightly observes. It could have been any old (or young) fraudster.

From what we have been told by the OP, Santander did nothing wrong. Quite the contrary. It was completely correct that they put the brakes on and investigated. OK, may be they should have investigated at a faster speed but that's about the only criticism I would put to them in this case.

I appreciate that life has been traumatic for the OP and the mother just recently, and I send my deepest sympathies for their loss. I would recommend, though, that they should be grateful that Santander did everything they could be expected to do to prevent an elderly lady to be scammed out of her money.

mr_accountant

am I missing something here? Amongst all the waffle, from what I can gather someone without authority tried to use internet banking, is that not fraud, yet OP is asking for compensation?

Obviously the bank did not know that the son was using his mum's internet access but such a large amount of transfer by someone who is 90, probably never used internet access or very little (and certainly not for transferring large amounts) would indeed cause a flag, ie santanders systems worked correctly. 

I have poa at santander, it can be set up online and you get separate login details (obviously) and you can't do immediate transactions, but have to wait until next day before it goes through, which is fine by me, and can move 20k at a time.

I'm any case Its recommended to have 2 current accounts one for everything and another in case the first one is blocked with a small quantity of money in it. 

Also Martin does not recommend anything just gives out information, I believe he sold this website 7/8 years ago. Its up to us as consumers to make the decisions, or pay someone to make them on our behalf, after giving them legal authority to do so. 

csgohan4

OP would have been on here complaining also if your mother was scammed out of thousands through online fraud, or would you be glad it was blocked? You can't have it both ways. Make it official and get a POA as above and don't try and save money by not getting one, it is false economy.