Santander blocked my account without any reason

boingy

@a7ash If you send me the cheques and a payment of £1000 I'll send them back to you in a nice envelope, recorded delivery and include a sincere apology and a hand drawn smiley face. I may even throw in a token £50 payment as a sweetener.
Cheaper and friendlier than a solicitor. 

UncleK

a7ash said:

I have now got separate closure letters for all my 3 accounts that I had with Santander in the mail. 

A cheque for one of my accounts also arrived separately for 20k which I promptly encashed. 

When I called them , they said other cheques are in the mail. I hope to get them soon. The other cheques for my two accounts are 66k total, so hope Royal Mail doesn’t lose it. I am still surprised - they send all these by 2nd class post. 

No reason for closing bank account was given, the closure letter only said -  it’s down to their company policies and they can stop banking facilities to a customer at any time.

No notice was given to me for bank account closure, just closure letters by second class post for a customer who maintained north of 85k, not to mention, two and half months of limbo when they couldn’t give me any information. 

Glad to hear you got your money back but disappointed in Santander that there was no hint of why they didn't want you as a customer and why they had caused you such inconvenience. I'm not sure how you can raise the profile of this bad behaviour on their part any further. Even if "you were doing something wrong" in their opinion, it does seem odd that they can't say what they didn't like.

GeoffTF

I do not know what has happened here. Suppose that Santander thought that someone might be doing something naughty, but could not prove it. Perhaps their customer was paying large sums of cash into their personal account. If that proved to be money laundering, Santander would be in trouble for not stopping it. They did not want to take that risk, so they closed the account. They would not want to say why because they could not prove anything.

MX5huggy

I think I would put a Subject Access Request into Santander? I’m sure they would come up with an exception but it would make them work a little bit. 

Bigwheels1111

At last, Now the real fun begings, Time effort costs and lost interest.

As I found with TSB when I put in a claim, They paid me £100 for having to use another bank account to pay my bills.

As I had to borrow money from friend and family, a bit more cash.

Phone costs, Parking costs per visit to branch, Plus £50 a visit I think it was.

Interest, 85K at 5% for the fixed rate savings your money was going into say 10 weeks or 70 days = £4250.00 a year, £11.64 a day and 70 days £815.00.

Then the https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/ can add interest to your claim from memory.

ToastLady

No matter what, I think banks should be duty bound to give an explanation as to why you are no longer wanted as a customer, as quickly as they can. I do appreciate that some investigations can take a bit of time in the case of fraud/dubious practises, and banks would keep that quiet.
However, in this case, cheques have been paid out, and the OP really should know why, and absolutely claim compensation.

boingy

The reason they choose not to provide details is simply that they don't want to get bogged down in an argument about it.

Momanns

ToastLady said:

No matter what, I think banks should be duty bound to give an explanation as to why you are no longer wanted as a customer, as quickly as they can. I do appreciate that some investigations can take a bit of time in the case of fraud/dubious practises, and banks would keep that quiet.
However, in this case, cheques have been paid out, and the OP really should know why, and absolutely claim compensation.

Why? Given most are closed for fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, criminal activity or clear breaches of T&C's such as business usage on a personal account. What would an explanation achieve? 

The OP can complain and already has with the Ombudsman. Santander will have to justify their behavior. More than likely there is a reason the OP is omitting much like others who have posted similar threads.

The biggest lesson here is to not have all your eggs in one banking basket. 

Momanns

MX5huggy said:

I think I would put a Subject Access Request into Santander? I’m sure they would come up with an exception but it would make them work a little bit. 

Utterly pointless. People complain about response times for complaints and then suggest submitting spurious requests in to "make them work"?! 

Exactly the same as those who criticize when banks take actions such as freezing accounts but are the first to moan when their fraud case isn't resolved within 20 minutes.

UncleK

The OP can complain and already has with the Ombudsman. Santander will have to justify their behavior. More than likely there is a reason the OP is omitting much like others who have posted similar threads.

I respectfully suggest we don't assume it's the OP that's at fault. It may be - it may not be. Banks are highly likely to make boo-boos and not fess up to it. Let Santander - who took the action - justify their behaviour - full stop.