Problems withdrawing money from on-line Building Society

SalveForOldSores

I had a fixed-rate Bond which matured at the end of last year.
The funds still sit in the account, but now at a  much reduced rate of interest.
In mid-January I made a couple of on-line withdrawls from this account without issue.
But my further attempts (3)  to withdraw the balance and re-direct it an account paying a better rate-of-interest have been thwarted since the end of January, by the introduction of a new on-line one-time code system.
Last week I was sent a letter detailing how to set-up this new authentication system, followed the instructions in the letter implicity and when on Saturday,  I attempted to register my participation in my  on-line account, the process failed.
Contacting customer service on the telephone again this morning, I was offered a "Quick-fix" using the telephone registration,  but this failed, possibly due to me being incorrectly advised by the customer service operative. Now I'm waiting again for a second  set-up letter to resolve this issue.

My concern is that the same will happen again and that I may miss the dated deposit entry window for the new account.
I get the distinct impression that feet are being deliberately dragged in respect of actioning the withdrawl.
As I've never encountered this before with either bank or building society, I've written to the CEO for assistance.
Anybody else encountered this recently ?


 

cattie

Extremely unlikely that building society are deliberately dragging their feet to keep hold of your money.  The new security systems introduced are to help safeguard people's money & whilst it may take a little longer due to technical or other issues, you will get your money back, hopefully as soon as the 2nd set up letter arrives.

happybagger

Will they not accept an old fashioned withdrawal request by post, requesting a cheque? If the account also has a passbook, enclose it.
Check out the original bond's terms and conditions.

I understand why it's done, but sometimes 2FA can be a real pain

SalveForOldSores

The account for the 7 year Bond was opened as an On-line account exclusively  (No passbook) and that has, on maturity, just turned into a very low interest rate savings account for which the T & Cs are published on-line in the account (Extract below)
The initial deposit was made electronically and the two factor authentication in place at the time of opening the Bond Account was based on an authentication  grid card, issued  to the account holder at the time of account creation (Enduring for the life of the account). This system has now been replaced, at the instigation of the Building Society, by a mobile phone based One-Time code using mobile phone or landline.

Its the latter that I'm having difficulty registering for and setting-up.
Initial registration requires a "One-time Registration" code, which the account holder requests on-line and then the Society supplies the code in a letter, together with explicit step by step instructions, addressed to the account holder, on how to apply the code. I followed the instructions exactly . . . result fail ! Interestingly, the original Grid-Card had to be registered on-line before the account holder could access his account and that did not require the involvement of customer services, purely on-line registration and that worked, first-time 7 years ago !  Funny !Funny that . . . as Pete and Dud would have said.

Similarly, the current instructions  for registering and setting-up the One-Time Code for phone use make no reference to the requirement to involve the Customer Service department in this set-up procedure.
Yet when I phoned Customer Service this morning, they said they needed to be involved.
So, conclusion, at best internal communications error between staff in the Society e.g. poor training in the new system or the system has failed and they are trying to keep it stuck together with manual intervention , or Customer Service are trying to make work for themselves (I've encountered that before).

But, I can say that it is probably one of the few occasions that Marketing men are not involved in the problem . . . . .who ever heard of investments developing "The Stockholm effect" ?

 The relevant extract  from the current Ts & Cs is this. They get you at condition 4 (And its not a joint account, as I'm single):-

3.  You cannot operate an offline account through ******* Online, although you may view most other ******* Building Society savings accounts you hold online, view your residential mortgage balance, and update some of your customer information.

4. Services operated online are operated directly by you. We cannot carry out Online Services on your behalf and cannot prevent access to them if access to ******* Online has been authenticated by the Online Security procedures. If you have any joint accounts and one of you gives an online instruction relating to that account then any such instructions are deemed to have been given in respect of both of you until we receive notice that a dispute exists.

The matters with the CEO, because my time is just as valuable to me as no doubt his is, on paper.