Santander - onerous security checks

Bridlington1

Personally I've been left rather surprised by Santander as I've managed to completely dodge their security checks, despite having opened their limited edition esaver at 2.75%, transferred a 5 figure sum into it via my current account, then transferred it into Al Rayan in batches soon after. The most stringent I've ever had is having to verify a payment in the app. Could be luck of the draw I suppose.

kinger101

grumbler said:

happybagger said:

grumbler said:

What's wrong with online banking?

nothing, for someone with a computer or a smartphone

Well, for a person with poor hearing who "can only walk about 50 steps" it's, possibly, time to think about getting one and using it with your help.

Which demographic do you think is most susceptible to banking fraud.....

grumbler

kinger101 said:

grumbler said:

happybagger said:

grumbler said:

What's wrong with online banking?

nothing, for someone with a computer or a smartphone

Well, for a person with poor hearing who "can only walk about 50 steps" it's, possibly, time to think about getting one and using it with your help.

Which demographic do you think is most susceptible to banking fraud.....

I did say "with ... help". And, IMO, even "using an Ordinary Power of Attorney" will be much harder without online banking. Well, each to their own....

happybagger

The attorney (ie me) WILL have online access! I already am a Santander customer anyway.
The donor (the 85 yr old) does not, and it aint gonna happen.

GeoffTF

Band7 said:

GeoffTF said:

It helps to have a track record of transferring large sums of money, know the system, and do everything right.

I am offended by the suggestion that I don't know the system, and that I don't do everything right. Like you, I have a long track record of large, and frequent, transactions in and out of Santander, and like you, I found that generally everything works well, including the occasional verification of transactions. There's no question in my mind, however, that they have increased the severity and frequency of their checks, and they have now taken to lock your online/app access if they need to check a particular transaction. They then don't have enough staff to answer the phone within an acceptable timescale (IMO, more than 5 minutes wait for such instances is unacceptable), they treat you like a fraudster rather than like a customer, and they make ridiculous statements such as "Santander doesn't recommend the use of Open Banking". 

They have this morning offered me £30 for the time I had to spend to get my account access re-enabled and my payment processed as requested, but not any apologies for the way I was treated, and for the false information I was given by their operative. I have declined their complaint resolution findings, so it's now going to the FOS.

I was not addressing my observations to you or anybody else. Nobody fully knows Santander's system. They keep changing it to wrong foot fraudsters. Nonetheless, experience of what has worked in the past helps. When I said "do everything right", I mean do everything as Santander wants you to do.

The system used to be that you instructed the bank to make a transaction. They made the transaction, and if the money went to a fraudster that was your problem not theirs. That has all changed. The system now is that you have to convince the bank that you are not sending money to fraudster before they will send it.

I have been locked out from my online account when attempting to do an online transaction that fails Confirmation of Payee. I have never been locked out when attempting to do a £20K online transaction that passed Confirmation of Payee or an online transaction for £1 that failed Conformation of Payee. I have never been locked out of my online account as a result of making a telephone payment, but the payment has sometimes been delayed. It has usually been possible to stop payments being delayed by offering answers to all the questions that security is likely to ask up front.

I repeat. You have to prove to Santander's satisfaction that you are not sending money to a fraudster before they will send it.

GeoffTF

Rollinghome said:
If you read my post, you'll see I got the 2FA code to my mobile, and entered my pw. The request was accepted, but the transfer was then blocked without telling me.  I then got an automated phone call to my land-line asking for my DOB and confirmation of the transfer request, was told the confirmation was accepted, but the transaction would need to be made again.  When I did that, all access to my account was immediately blocked, and I was dumped out.

That is usual. You can avoid that by doing the transfer over the phone.

Rollinghome said:
Once might have been acceptable, if eccentric. This happened not once, but time after time for near identical transfers of around £20k each and one for just £8k.

Send all the money in one go if you can. Otherwise, you need to plan for that.

Rollinghome said:
On one occasion, the process of getting a payment authorised took a full two hours.

It can take several days.

Rollinghome said:
Nor is it simply a lack of experience, either my own or that of others posting here.  I've had a current account with Santander for 10 years and other accounts with them from well before that - since before António Horta-Osório arrived as UK CEO and announced it was his hope to raise Santander from the worst-rated bank in the UK to the second-worst bank within two years.

I have had an account with Santander since they were Abbey National Building Society. That does not help much, because the system keeps changing.

GeoffTF

Is Santander a bad bank? Judging from what I have read, they are no worse than the other big banks. The system has changed for all banks and transferring money can be more difficult. I can transfer up to £100K over the phone with Santander. I would have to go into a branch with the other big banks.

Bridlington1

GeoffTF said:

Is Santander a bad bank? Judging from what I have read, they are no worse than the other big banks. The system has changed for all banks and transferring money can be more difficult. I can transfer up to £100K over the phone with Santander. I would have to go into a branch with the other big banks.

Personally I've found them to be pretty good so far. Easy to get hold of a human via the chat service, sometimes offer market leading rates with switching offer thrown in.

I've certainly had worse with regards to security checks, i.e HSBC account frozen for 23 days for transferring money to Virgin, then a few weeks later Virgin freezing my account and locking me out of internet banking for 5 days for transferring £500 to Hodge bank. With Virgin I had to go through about half a dozen different departments and a dozen phone calls over the course of 5 days, with hold times of up to 2 hrs a pop before I could get the payment released. 

expansion

Santander blocked my account "for my safety" after I tried to buy Premium Bonds on NSI. I moved on and switched at the first bonus opportunity. Good riddance!

wmb194

I don't have these issues with my main hub account with Lloyds. The last time it blocked a payment of mine was years and years ago. Anecdotally, judging by the frequent threads and posts on this issue, Santander seems to have taken these blocks to another level.