Santander doubling energy cashback for 2 months

Daliah

huw01 said:

Slightly off topic, I notice my Santander Select Account is now paying 1.0% interest, gone up from 0.75%

You could get a lot better interest for easy access elsewhere. Even Chase pay 1.5%, without a monthly charge, and you can set up SOs and DDs on their savings account. But much better instant access rates are now available - 1.9% is currently tops, and I guess it will get over 2% before long. You could also still get the Santander cashback with the 123 Lite, which costs just £2 a month.

I ditched my Select for the 123 Lite   years ago and saved/earned buckets since. The downgrade is done in less than a minute online. I have not noticed any reduction in Santander service. I even still have a Select debit card, and ring the Select number if I need to talk to them.

RG2015

I still have concerns on how the Government rebate of £66 in each of October and November will affect the Santander double cashback. If the rebate is taken off my monthly bill then my direct debit should remain unchanged.

However, if my energy supplier decides to reduce my direct debit, my cashback will be reduced by £1.32 in each of October and November.

My supplier, E.ON has this on their website,

• Fixed Direct Debit customers will receive the money automatically as a deduction to their monthly Direct Debit.

However, I spoke to E.ON a little while back and they said the rebate would be taken off my bill and my DD would remain unchanged.

As any good MSEer, I will be keeping an eye on this to attempt to make best use of both the rebate and the double cashback.

wiseonesomeofthetime

Octopus are reducing the DD for those six months by the rebate too. 

It is how the government instructed it. 

Not a credit on the account, which would have made more sense to me tbh.

I shall be putting the equivalent aside in my Chase Savings account, from where i pay my energy DD.


Also, posts above have spoken about increasing their DD for a couple of months to take advantage of this offer. 

Be wary though, energy companies may not make reducing them back easy. 

swanfan02

British Gas sent this email regarding the government rebate, part of it is below…

For Direct Debit customers, we’ll send the discount straight to your bank each month – like a refund – once your Direct Debit has gone through.

For example:
If your Direct Debit is £100 a month, you’d pay that as normal. Then a few days later, £67 will be paid in to your bank account. If your Direct Debit is less than £67 a month, say £50 for example, £50 will be refunded to your bank account and the remaining £17 will be applied as credit to your energy account.

Section62

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

Also, posts above have spoken about increasing their DD for a couple of months to take advantage of this offer. 

Be wary though, energy companies may not make reducing them back easy. 

It depends on your circumstances, if you can afford to overpay then even the normal 2% cashback can represent a worthwhile reason to let your energy company take a larger DD than they need to pay for the energy you use.

At some point the amount of credit you've built up means they either need to reduce your DD again, or agree to refund (part of) the credit.

where_are_we

On the Energy section of the forum I started a thread about increasing our Energy company DD from Santander in order to get maximum cashback benefit. Remember there is a cap on cashback of £5 which will increase to £10 for the 2 months of the doubling offer. Therefore the maximum cashback is limited to a £250 DD during the offer and afterwards (4% of £250 = £10 and 2% of £250 = £5. Because of the government rebate of £67 or £66 it may be that a £316 DD might be needed to get £10 cashback. However I changed my DD for September onwards to £250. DD was £100  when the cap was about £1200 per annum, this then changed to £160 when cap increased to about £1900 per annum in April and the new price cap for October onwards will be announced on Friday and is expected to be about £3500. This would mean roughly a £300 monthly DD. So I don`t think a £250 DD is excessive for our energy usage.I realise the cap figures I have quoted are for "average" energy bills. It might be sensible to wait for Friday`s cap announcement but remember that, depending on when your September DD goes out, you have to allow time for your DD change to be implemented.

MutleyB

The Santander 123 cashback on energy bills is available to customers with direct debits from mains gas or electricity companies. However, they pay NO cashback at all on direct debits from LPG or domestic oil suppliers. These conditions are hidden in the small print of their offer. This is very discriminatory against many customers living in the countryside who have to use such fuels to heat their homes. I have complained about this to Santander, but they still refuse to classify these suppliers direct debits as energy, which is totally wrong. Given the situation, it is even more annoying when they keep on reminding me that their cashback on energy is being doubled for two months.

Any idea how best to publicise this fact so that the bank is shamed into doing something? It is already bad enough that the energy price cap does not apply to LPG and domestic oil.

daveyjp

Why would a bank be shamed into doing something?  They are a commercial enterprise, not a public service.

The issue with LPG and oil is the bank have no proof you are using all of what you are buying for your own heating purposes.

MutleyB

Santander could simply stop the misleading promotion of their double cashback offer by stating that it only applies to mains gas and electricity customers instead of 'energy' direct debits. Banks obviously have the right to restrict their offers, but hiding real exclusions in the terms and conditions is not being remotely transparent.

Daliah

Santander can, and do, choose what they are paying cashback on, and it is obviously correct that there are T&Cs attached to their offer.  If you feel the words on their promotion are misleading, you could try the Advertising Standard Authority  (ASA), but I reckon the ASA would probably not even accept the complaint.

MutleyB said:

Any idea how best to publicise this fact so that the bank is shamed into doing something? It is already bad enough that the energy price cap does not apply to LPG and domestic oil.

Would your energy (no pun intended) be better spent on getting a price cap on LPG and domestic oil, rather unsuccessfully trying to force a bank to pay you a few pence each month?