Bank Blocking Payment

Peter58

Long story short, had another payment to a company I have used a few times blocked by Nat West who also blocked my card which took 30 mins to resolve! Raised a complaint and there is nothing they can do about it. My wife banks with Barclays and has never had an issue using her card. 
So, after over 40 years being loyal I have decided it’s time to change banks but obviously don’t want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Martin Lewis has First Direct as a top customer service score. Anyone care to comment on what they are like at letting known payments go through when you have plenty of money in your account?

km1500

everyone will have their own stories but for me i have found lloyds, halifax, santander, natwest to be the worst and FD , nationwide the best for not blocking payments.

Daliah

Blocking of payments is happening increasingly at all banks (as you can see from various reports on this forum). Switching banks does not save you from blocking. I had my entire Santander account access blocked the other day when I wanted to shift some money to another account of mine. Like in your case, it took 30 minutes to resolve - that was relatively quick but it's a wasted 30 minutes I'll never get back.

Yet it won't change.

The reason is that banks are now compelled to refund APP scams, as a result of protests by consumer action groups such as Which? and MSE. Unsurprisingly, banks have now stepped up their checks, especially on larger payments and payments to new payees, in order to reduce their exposure. The result is that we are all subject to a lot more scrutiny. 

Thank the fraudsters who have made £583.2 million in 2021, the gullible people who still keep falling for the fraudsters, and the consumer rights organisations who managed to make it the banks' fault.

Bridlington1

As @Daliah said, Blocking of payments is happening increasingly at all banks. All that switching bank accounts will do is give you a switching incentive, which will have no impact on the likelihood of having a payment blocked. Rather than looking for banks that do not block payments, I would suggest looking for banks that have shorter hold times. At least this way you will not have to spend as much time trying to get payments unblocked when they are flagged up by the bank's fraud team.

molerat

km1500 said:

everyone will have their own stories but for me i have found lloyds, halifax, santander, natwest to be the worst and FD , nationwide the best for not blocking payments.

And Lloyds are the only one that has ever blocked a payment for me to an account that is one of my nominated accounts and has 2 standing orders going to it every month.

Daliah

Bridlington1 said:

As @Daliah said, Blocking of payments is happening increasingly at all banks. All that switching bank accounts will do is give you a switching incentive, which will have no impact on the likelihood of having a payment blocked. Rather than looking for banks that do not block payments, I would suggest looking for banks that have shorter hold times. At least this way you will not have to spend as much time trying to get payments unblocked when they are flagged up by the bank's fraud team.

It’s a bit hit & miss on who has the shortest wait times - as it would depend on their caseload. The OP. was quite lucky getting everything resolved in 30 minutes at Natwest, and so was I with Santander. There have also been many complaints about the length of time Santander take………..

I am quite impressed, though, how Starling Bank are handling blocked payments. Firstly, they tell you immediately that they need to perform further checks. Secondly, they then instantly ask you 5 or 6 questions in the app - takes 30 secs to answer them (same Qs Santander ask you on the phone). Then the payment goes into pending, and they send you a message an hour or two later saying the payment has been made. I haven’t had any rejected, so don’t know what would happen in that case. I also haven’t pestered them about the pending payments in chat or on the phone, as I think that would just add to their workload, and not speed up the release.

binao

@Peter58

"time to change banks"

So you change, new bank blocked, progress - same  old  leaky boat

Opening additional accounts is the way forward as you have, "plenty of money". 

Peter58

Thanks all. Some food for thought. 

Bigwheels1111

FD is my main account, can’t fault them. With them for about 25 years.
They have blocked payments recently, but are on call until 20.00 or 22.00 for the fraud team.
One call sorts it out.
Once you have made 2 or 3 payments to the same bank or company you won’t get any issues.
New payees so far, Chase, Shawbrook, Zopa, Al Ryan to name but a few.
No funds held up in over 3 weeks now.

penners324

Wouldn't touch FD, their app is very poor.