Santander 4% cashback offer on Energy DDs hasn't worked correctly for me!!

RG404XE

I paid Octopus Energy (OE) £199 by DD on 13-Sep and 13-Oct to take advantage of the Santander Lite 4% cashback offer. I then reduced the DD to £67 for 13-Nov, as the Government were kindly helping out with their Energy Price guarantee and giving all DD-payers a £400 refund spread over 6 months.
Santander paid me 2% of £199 = £3.98 on 26-Sep. Correct.
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They then paid me 4% of £199 = £7.96 on 26-Oct.
Correct - but that should have been two entries on the statement - 2% outstanding from Sept, and first 2% of cashback offer in Oct.
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They have just paid me 4% of £67 = £2.68 on 26-Nov.
Incorrect. They should have paid me the outstanding 2% of the £199 paid by DD in October, and just 2% of my November DD payment of £67. 
Resulting in £3.98 + £1.34 = £5.32. 
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It's only a trivial amount of money but I have raised a complaint with Santander.
My concern is - how many other Santander current account holders may have been affected?
Particularly when OE were trying to be helpful by reducing my DD by £66 in October when the first "government" refund of £66 kicked in.
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The entry on this particular forum from RG2015 on 29-Aug at 3:15pm is particularly relevant because Santander have strange {internal) monthly dates for their statement reporting periods !!

eskbanker

You've misunderstood and Santander have paid out what they said they would - their statement cycles don't coincide with calendar months, so they published a clear explanatory table showing that the DDs that would receive the doubled cashback were those from the periods leading up to October and November statements (not calendar September and October), which is exactly what they did for yours.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220803233714/https://www.santander.co.uk/landing/current-accounts/campaign

RG404XE

To eskbanker (29/11 @ 17:24)
Firstly, many thanks for your quick reply and the link to S ANT&DEC which I have never seen before !
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You've confirmed my worst fears that my 123 LITE "account statement date" has clashed with my increased energy DD payments to Octopus Energy. 
But it's not the 1980's when you used to wait for your end-of-month bank account statement to drop through the letterbox.
Nowadays bank statements aren't needed and are invariably archived online from your messages tab.
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I have checked through very old paperwork and found that we opened our Santander 123 accounts on 21-May-2015.
And I have an account statement from 21st May to 22nd June 2015.
Therefore, my "account statement date" must be around the 21/22/23 day-of-the-month.
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So, I was far too hasty in changing my energy DD payment in September. Should have just left it to October and November.
Hey ho - we'll see if I get any compo from Santander as I now have a complaint registered.
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Thanks again - the detail in this note are for anyone else puzzled by their Santander energy cashback amounts.
.     

eskbanker

RG404XE said:

But it's not the 1980's when you used to wait for your end-of-month bank account statement to drop through the letterbox.
Nowadays bank statements aren't needed and are invariably archived online from your messages tab.

I don't believe that Santander's use of months aligned with opening date is specifically oriented to issuing statements as such, it's just that they use these monthly periods for calculating cashback, fee collection, credit interest (where applicable), overdraft charges (where applicable), minimum monthly deposit validation, etc, and so it presumably suits them to have these staggered across the month rather than having to do all the calculating in one big block, although other banks seem to cope with that!

born_again

I'm more annoyed by the fact the 4% happens to coincide with the generous £66 reduction of the DD we are getting.. Which cut nearly 50% off the DD 🤬

eskbanker

born_again said:

I'm more annoyed by the fact the 4% happens to coincide with the generous £66 reduction of the DD we are getting.. Which cut nearly 50% off the DD 🤬

If your (undiscounted) monthly energy costs are still only in £140 territory then you're doing pretty well!

born_again

Yep we are lucky. Given a 24 house use & heating on (stat) from 06:00 to 22:00 Just under £2K a year for gas & electric. 

Band7

born_again said:

I'm more annoyed by the fact the 4% happens to coincide with the generous £66 reduction of the DD we are getting.. Which cut nearly 50% off the DD 🤬

Suppose it depends on how your supplier handles the “discount”, otherwise known as a loan…..

Mine left the DD unchanged and pays £66 into my 123 Lite now and then. I just had the second and final ☹️ lot of £10 cashback for energy 

RG2015

Band7 said:

born_again said:

I'm more annoyed by the fact the 4% happens to coincide with the generous £66 reduction of the DD we are getting.. Which cut nearly 50% off the DD 🤬

Suppose it depends on how your supplier handles the “discount”, otherwise known as a loan…..

Mine left the DD unchanged and pays £66 into my 123 Lite now and then. I just had the second and final ☹️ lot of £10 cashback for energy 

Why do you call it a loan? It is not as though it needs to be repaid.

Band7

Of course we’ll have to repay it. The energy firms will recover it over the next 4 years or so, hidden in the unit prices they are charging us

MikeJXE

Santander paid 4% for mine on Nov 10th and Oct 9th.  the £66 energy payment made no difference as it's paid direct into my bank