Santander causing me huge problems not allowing me access my account

bulldog80

Hi all

I’m new on here but having to post as I’m tearing my hair out with Santander.

My partner and I have numerous joint accounts with them already and a few weeks ago we opened up a couple more to allocate savings to. Santander emailed me to say the accounts were open and available to use so I transferred money into it to pay for a car deposit and also mortgage. 

The funds I transferred in were simply from another Santander account with them and they instantly put blocks on both new accounts effectively locking our money away so we can’t use it.
This was now 10 days ago - I’ve missed out on a car purchase that I had the money for and am in serious danger of defaulting on my mortgage as a consequence also. 
I’ve called the bank every day and their ‘fraud complaints team’ and they simply say that they are waiting on the support team to respond to their email to see if the blocks can be removed.

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all but is causing a huge amount of stress to both of us. The bank simply don’t seem to care at all and are in no rush to resolve the matter. I wouldn’t mind if I had actually done something to warrant all this!!!

I can’t raise it with the Ombudsman until 8 weeks have passed by which time Satander will have ruined my credit rating by causing the mortgage to be defaulted. Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I am fully intending to go to the press about this as they are causing such hardship.

prettyandfluffy

Unfortunately there are many similar posts on this forum, it seems to be happening more frequently.  There is nothing you can do until the bank has concluded its investigation, you are in a slightly better position than some as you have other bank accounts.  Notify your mortgage lender if you cannot pay it from another source.

BoGoF

Genuine question, why do you need 'numerous' joint accounts with them and what do you do with them.

You may have breached some T&C by having all these accounts.

Hoenir

How many accounts do you have with Santander? Why open yet another account if the money was going to be immediately being transferred out again. Makes no sense. 

bulldog80

Thanks. It’s purely to manage my money - ie some is locked away in an ISA, others are there as instant access savings and others to be used less frequently. It’s essentially pots to put my money in so I can manage it effectively and save for different things.
I get your point but they should have just refused to open the accounts in that case and not sent the email saying they were fine to use and certainly not allowed me to transfer my money into them. I cannot believe I am not being allowed access to my own money. They are treating me like some sort of criminal when all I’ve done is use a savings account to hold money in that I already had sat with them.
I’m really panicked about it all as it’s hurting us.

bulldog80

Hoenir said:

How many accounts do you have with Santander? Why open yet another account if the money was going to be immediately being transferred out again. Makes no sense. 

Not at all. It’s a simple concept to ensure that I don’t spend money from my other accounts that is meant for a specific purpose. 

molerat

Have you actually raised a formal complaint ?

eskbanker

bulldog80 said:

The funds I transferred in were simply from another Santander account with them

Just to be clear, this was an internal transfer between two accounts in the same names?

bulldog80

molerat said:

Have you actually raised a formal complaint ?

Yes. But they seem in no rush at all to resolve it and are quite happy for me to no longer be able to pay for things while they take their sweet time.

AmityNeon

To clarify, all transfers were internal? There was no incoming money from external accounts? Were there any recent deposits prior to opening these new savings accounts that could in any way be interpreted as unusual, irregular or suspicious?

BoGoF

How many though? 

And why would you transfer the amount to cover your mortgage to this newly opened account (I'm assuming it's not a switch) as the lender will still pull from the old account as I wouldn't think you could change the DD source at such short notice?