Co-operative Refer a Friend Switching Offer £125 (Nov 2022)

WillPS

Bridlington1 said:

The thing that's baffling me though is that there are people on this thread who claimed the £50 during the original offer period (2021-November 2022), switched out before they increased the payment to £125, then switched back in in November/December to successfully receive £125.

Unless I'm going mad, the FOS ruling would suggest these people would have been ineligible for the £125 so why have Co-op paid them?

The FOS don't have sight of them though, you'd probably have trouble getting them to consider the bank's actions towards those miscellaneous offers and even if you could the Co-op would just claim those payments were in error.

Dustybee

I'd just like to give a big thank you to @Bridlington1 for updating here with the response received from the FOS. I know from reading another thread that you have other things going on at the moment!

I've upload my complaint to FOS and have changed the emphasis after reading the details that the Adjudicator has listed.

It may make no difference of course, my claim could fail as well but I think I've been given a better chance to get the more important details of the complaint across with the information given here.

bristolleedsfan

Did anyone who was asked to send ID etc by post, account opening/switch taken place after referral form claim deadline get £125 payments?

WillPS

bristolleedsfan said:

Did anyone who was asked to send ID etc by post, account opening/switch taken place after referral form claim deadline get £125 payments?

One of my referees did in Jan - although in that case the published date was basically ignored since so many switches which were scheduled ended up happening late.

bristolleedsfan

WillPS said:

bristolleedsfan said:

Did anyone who was asked to send ID etc by post, account opening/switch taken place after referral form claim deadline get £125 payments?

One of my referees did in Jan - although in that case the published date was basically ignored since so many switches which were scheduled ended up happening late.

Someone I know, not from this forum applied around 12 December, since filling in referral form has not heard anything, he has since contacted Coop Bank who referred him to "within 60 days" terms.

17 January  "hey, still ongoing - co-op seem to only communicate by letter, so its taken weeks to get ID sorted with postal strikes etc, soon hopefully, re-sent off last week"

23 March     "hi, after some gremlins the switch has worked, will fill in form now"

WillPS

bristolleedsfan said:

WillPS said:

bristolleedsfan said:

Did anyone who was asked to send ID etc by post, account opening/switch taken place after referral form claim deadline get £125 payments?

One of my referees did in Jan - although in that case the published date was basically ignored since so many switches which were scheduled ended up happening late.

Someone I know, not from this forum applied around 12 December, since filling in referral form has not heard anything, he has since contacted Coop Bank who referred him to "within 60 days" terms.

17 January  "hey, still ongoing - co-op seem to only communicate by letter, so its taken weeks to get ID sorted with postal strikes etc, soon hopefully, re-sent off last week"

23 March     "hi, after some gremlins the switch has worked, will fill in form now"

Ah, I think this was (just) inside 60 days still... I'd complain if I was in your referees position. 

Bridlington1

WillPS said:

Bridlington1 said:

The thing that's baffling me though is that there are people on this thread who claimed the £50 during the original offer period (2021-November 2022), switched out before they increased the payment to £125, then switched back in in November/December to successfully receive £125.

Unless I'm going mad, the FOS ruling would suggest these people would have been ineligible for the £125 so why have Co-op paid them?

The FOS don't have sight of them though, you'd probably have trouble getting them to consider the bank's actions towards those miscellaneous offers and even if you could the Co-op would just claim those payments were in error.

There's been an interesting development. I've received a message from someone on this forum who was in the same position as me regarding the Co-op refer a friend, i.e. had got the first £50, switched out shortly after Co-op upped the amount to £125, then switched back in again. The FOS has ruled in their favour and Co-op have agreed to pay up. The only difference between our cases was that they included evidence from this thread in their FOS case, plus details of other switching offers from other banks which define what a new customer is.

I shall now go through this thread collecting evidence (omitting names of course) and shall ask the FOS to reconsider my case. It would be helpful if anyone else who has received both the £50 and £125 payments could post this information on this thread. I think I may have shot myself in the foot though as their response contained the following:

But if you decide that you don't accept what I’ve said – and want an Ombudsman to make a final decision on your complaint – you must provide any further evidence or representations by 6 April 2023. Requests for more time must also be made by that date. If I don’t hear from you by 6 April 2023 we might not be able to look at your complaint again.

So it looks like I have made a complete and utter horlicks of this one but I think it's worth a shot.

Bridlington1

It's just suddenly occurred to me, what a fool I've been. The excuse that the £50 and £125 offers were one and the same on the grounds that Co-op never announced the end of their offer before upping the amount from £50 to £125 can be blown out of the water by our good old friends at Santander.

On 2nd August 2022 Santander launched a £160 offer, which was replaced by a £175 offer on 23/8/22. Santander never announced the end of their £160 offer prior to launching the new £175 offer, indeed their website shortly after 1am on the very day they launched the £175 offer still showed this:




Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220823010123/https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/current-accounts/switching

So Santander never announced the end of their £160 switching offer when they upped the amount to £175 but despite this both offers were in fact completely separate offers.

bristolleedsfan

Bridlington1 said:

/https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/current-accounts/switching

So Santander never announced the end of their £160 switching offer when they upped the amount to £175 but despite this both offers were in fact completely separate offers.

The only posts I have seen have said that Santander did not pay for more than one switch, maybe i have missed something ???

Ed-1

bristolleedsfan said:

Bridlington1 said:

/https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/current-accounts/switching

So Santander never announced the end of their £160 switching offer when they upped the amount to £175 but despite this both offers were in fact completely separate offers.

The only posts I have seen have said that Santander did not pay for more than one switch, maybe i have missed something ???

That's because Santander have a clause that says if you've ever benefitted from a switch incentive before you're not eligible. Coop don't.