What does your bank do in this situation

MoneySavingTart

I've been with my bank for virtually 35 years and one or two things are beginning to pi88 me off about their procedures and lack of flexibility. Customer (lack of) Services just say that the way we do things.

I've escalated this to a formal complaint but still got nowhere.

I'm looking to switch.

The last straw for me is that any payee set up with them for faster payments is erased after 13 months.
A couple of times this has tripped me up with me needing to ask a recipient to send me their details again when I was trying to make a surprise gift.

If readers don't mind please would you say publicly or via PM if your bank retain payee details until you decide to delete them rather than after some arbitrary period.

Thanks

Section62

MoneySavingTart said:

I've been with my bank for virtually 35 years and one or two things are beginning to pi88 me off about their procedures and lack of flexibility. Customer (lack of) Services just say that the way we do things.

I've escalated this to a formal complaint but still got nowhere.

I'm looking to switch.

The last straw for me is that any payee set up with them for faster payments is erased after 13 months.
A couple of times this has tripped me up with me needing to ask a recipient to send me their details again when I was trying to make a surprise gift.

If readers don't mind please would you say publicly or via PM if your bank retain payee details until you decide to delete them rather than after some arbitrary period.

Thanks

Nationwide?

If so, they are the only financial organisation I use that does this.  When I asked them why they introduced the policy I got a nonsense answer about running out of space on their computer systems.

Keep your oldest account with them, but switch your other business elsewhere.  Their savings rates are also abysmal.

Alex9384

Section62 said:

Nationwide?

If so, they are the only financial organisation I use that does this.  When I asked them why they introduced the policy I got a nonsense answer about running out of space on their computer systems.

Keep your oldest account with them, but switch your other business elsewhere.  Their savings rates are also abysmal.

They also told me (back in 2018) that they are working on new online banking with icons, transaction time and finally, showing payment references like all normal banks do. I was told this directly by their leader of Digital & Data Product Development. To this day, none of that was introduced. Honestly, I don't understand how customers tolerate the absence of payment references.

Edit: maybe it was called the head of digital propositions, or something like that. They even offered me to include me in their beta testing, which I accepted but never heard from them again.

Brie

Banks that don't do this....RBS, NatWest, Halifax, Barclays.  For customer service I'd say the best is Halifax but maybe I'm just lucky with the local branch who have been marvellous over the last few years when having to notify of deaths, set up new accounts, deal with house purchase payments etc etc

Alex9384

Brie said:

Banks that don't do this....RBS, NatWest, Halifax, Barclays.  For customer service I'd say the best is Halifax but maybe I'm just lucky with the local branch who have been marvellous over the last few years when having to notify of deaths, set up new accounts, deal with house purchase payments etc etc

I've banked with all of them (not RBS but it's the same thing as NatWest, just different colours) and I would say by far the best is Halifax/Lloyds, especially their online banking. NatWest closed all my accounts in 2021, so I can't tell if they've made any noticeable progress in how their online banking works, but I assume they haven't.

EssexExile

After 13 months I'd check with the recipient that they haven't changed banks. I keep a note of details I may need to keep anyway.

penners324

Starling doesn't. Far better than any of the above mentioned banks. But then all my banking is via app and Starling's smashes those others

Keep_pedalling

EssexExile said:

After 13 months I'd check with the recipient that they haven't changed banks. I keep a note of details I may need to keep anyway.

Me too, so many people switch regularly it would be a bit silly to send money to an account that there is a reasonable chance is no longer active.

MoneySavingTart

Thanks for all your replies. Somehow my notifications got turned off so I'll do a global reply.
Yes it is the Nationwide, the bank that likes to say no!
Curious that a friend told me that Barclays do prune lists but he was unsure over what period.
I'd not mind if say once a year NW said we are about to delete these entries, let us know within 30 days you want to keep any. They have also refused to put them in the list of recently deleted payees which would mean could be readily restored.
I'm leaning towards Halifax/Lloyds so I will talk to them next and try and extract a written reply on their policy.
Yes I will be keeping a list of payees in future but $ods law says I'll not be able to find the one I need when the time comes!

KRs
MST

MikeJXE

Santander do not strip my faster payments away

My oldest is 4/5 years and only used once 

MoneySavingTart

MikeJXE said:

Santander do not strip my faster payments away

My oldest is 4/5 years and only used once 

Thats interesting, someone else told me that Santander have deleted some of his payees? Maybe you have just been lucky.