Santander £50 eVoucher Incentive

inspectorperez

Just wondering what other forumites think of this little issue before I visit local branch to complain.

Approaching start of new Tax Year Santander offered a small £50 incentive if you opened a new Fixed Terms cash ISA and transferred in from another provider. The incentive was in the form of an eVoucher.

My wife and I both decided to proceed and opened up new accounts in our individual names and transfers in were duly processed. My wife received her voucher several days later, but I did not.

As the advertising T&Cs referred to a time period for receipt of this reward as "within 30 days", I waited accordingly, but mine still did not turn up.

Phoned to advertised number for complaints last Friday, eventually got through to an adviser. The lady I spoke to did not know how to resolve this and asked me to hold on the line. 25 minutes later she came back on the line to say that she had attempted to contact her ISA team colleagues 13 times for advice and instruction but was still unable to make contact with them. In addition her line manager was away and could not be contacted. She promised to ring back but at the time of writing this, has not done so.

I have subsequently posted an enquiry on the Santander Facebook page and have actually received a response. I am being told to get in contact with the Rewards company to follow up the enquiry under my own steam!

TBH, as you might imagine, I'm not particularly chuffed with that response. Amongst other things, I am reluctant to share any financial information with a third party company I don't know from "Adam"!

Okay, so this is not the final Armageddon and in reality is quite a trifling matter but I am interested to hear what others think.

TheBanker

At the risk of stating the obvious, have you checked your spam folder and also whether Santander have the correct email address?

Do you and your wife share an email address (or somehow have the same email address registered in Santander's system)? This might have caused some confusion if so.

You won't need to share financial information with the voucher issuing company (beyond what they already know from Santander) but it is worth calling to ask if they've issued your voucher and where they've sent it. 

inspectorperez

TheBanker said:

At the risk of stating the obvious, have you checked your spam folder and also whether Santander have the correct email address?

Do you and your wife share an email address (or somehow have the same email address registered in Santander's system)? This might have caused some confusion if so.

You won't need to share financial information with the voucher issuing company (beyond what they already know from Santander) but it is worth calling to ask if they've issued your voucher and where they've sent it. 

Yes checked spam folder.

Have now spoken to the Rewards company and guess what, they suggest I get in touch with Santander customer services team - cue hysterical laughter from my better half standing behind me!

badger09

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

inspectorperez

badger09 said:

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

Yes I met all the terms and the transfer in was in excess of £10k.

My wife received an email from Santander containing a link and a code which worked perfectly and she has her voucher (probably all spent now).

I have not received anything

Zuzi

I would raise a formal complaint with Santander. I was in the same situation from this offer back in autumn last year, spent probably a few hours on chat/phone with them and I ended up getting 2 compensation payments of 50GBP each (with about 2 months gone in between with no progress) so double what the voucher value would have been. I was told that I certainly met the T&C and it was probably just "go away" money but I gladly took it.

badger09

inspectorperez said:

badger09 said:

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

Yes I met all the terms and the transfer in was in excess of £10k.

My wife received an email from Santander containing a link and a code which worked perfectly and she has her voucher (probably all spent now).

I have not received anything

Thanks for clarifying. 

I was puzzled by Santander telling you to contact the rewards provider direct. The rewards provider will obviously have no knowledge of you so I can only assume Santander misunderstood what you told them. 

If you’re positive Santander had your correct email address and have checked your SPAM folder, then a formal complaint is in order. 

Good luck

wiseonesomeofthetime

inspectorperez said:

badger09 said:

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

Yes I met all the terms and the transfer in was in excess of £10k.

My wife received an email from Santander containing a link and a code which worked perfectly and she has her voucher (probably all spent now).

I have not received anything

You say it was in excess of £10k, but did the ISA transfer involve ALL of your ISA being transferred to Santander, as partial ISA transfers are excluded from the offer.

Just a thought.

inspectorperez

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

inspectorperez said:

badger09 said:

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

Yes I met all the terms and the transfer in was in excess of £10k.

My wife received an email from Santander containing a link and a code which worked perfectly and she has her voucher (probably all spent now).

I have not received anything

You say it was in excess of £10k, but did the ISA transfer involve ALL of your ISA being transferred to Santander, as partial ISA transfers are excluded from the offer.

Just a thought.

Lock stock and barrel !

badger09

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

inspectorperez said:

badger09 said:

A couple of basic questions. 

Did you meet all the T&Cs of the eVoucher offer? eg did the transferred ISA contain at least  £10k?

You say your wife received her voucher several days later.
Do you mean she received the email from Santander containing the voucher code? Did you receive that email from Santander? 

Yes I met all the terms and the transfer in was in excess of £10k.

My wife received an email from Santander containing a link and a code which worked perfectly and she has her voucher (probably all spent now).

I have not received anything

You say it was in excess of £10k, but did the ISA transfer involve ALL of your ISA being transferred to Santander, as partial ISA transfers are excluded from the offer.

Just a thought.

Whilst that is what the T&Cs said, as often happens, they’re not always rigorously applied. 

I transferred 2x£10k tranches into 2 different FRISAs, leaving a balance of approx £2200. I wasn’t expecting it, but I received 2x£50 eVouchers. 

inspectorperez

Just an update to conclude.

£50 paid into my current account today described as "Account adjustment". Obviously quicker for Santander to close the issue this way rather than investigate what went wrong.

No complaints really on my part, but I do now have reservations about the quality of communications with the bank after going round in so many circles. The old secure messaging system was a far better means of communicating with the bank as it provided a visible audit trail within your own portal. Heaven knows what it will be like when AI takes over!