Don't get caught out..

treelife

In May I switched my bank account to Santander which at the time was offering £175 to do so. I met all the criteria, filled in the on-line form and the application was accepted. A few months have passed and I started wondering why Santander hadn’t passed on the £175 switching fee?

I contacted them and they gave me this explanation-

I was not eligible for the switching payment because my application was completed on the 12th May two days before the eligibility to receive this payment which started on 14th May. I checked on their web site and there is no mention of a start and finish date when the switching payment will be applying when opening an account.

I explained this to Santander and although they admitted it’s their fault for not putting this information in the public domain, they still refused to pay the £175 although I opened the account in good faith.

Santander said “if I wasn’t happy” I could refer this to the ombudsman, well! its easier for me to move banks again just out of principle, but I just want to make others aware of this potential pit fall when switching banks

Kind regards

DullGreyGuy

treelife said:

In May I switched my bank account to Santander which at the time was offering £175 to do so. I met all the criteria, filled in the on-line form and the application was accepted. A few months have passed and I started wondering why Santander hadn’t passed on the £175 switching fee?

I contacted them and they gave me this explanation-

I was not eligible for the switching payment because my application was completed on the 12th May two days before the eligibility to receive this payment which started on 14th May. I checked on their web site and there is no mention of a start and finish date when the switching payment will be applying when opening an account.

I explained this to Santander and although they admitted it’s their fault for not putting this information in the public domain, they still refused to pay the £175 although I opened the account in good faith.

Santander said “if I wasn’t happy” I could refer this to the ombudsman, well! its easier for me to move banks again just out of principle, but I just want to make others aware of this potential pit fall when switching banks

Kind regards

If they've already given you a final response that admits there was no start date in the T&Cs you can do both, go to the ombudsman for the £175, statutory interest and maybe a token amount for the hassle and independently  switch providers too

Mark_d

T&Cs usually state that they can withdraw the offer.  It costs nothing to escalate to the Ombudsman but it's quicker and possibly more beneficial to move to a better bank

lincroft1710

Never trust a bank who use "celebs" in their ads!

Lorian

https://www.santander.co.uk/about-santander/media-centre/press-releases/santander-launches-ps175-switcher-offer-for-new-and

Says from the 14th.

dave2319

I agree that you should go to the ombudsman as well as switching. They've admitted to you that the start date wasn't mentioned at the time, and although the above article says the 14th, it says: "From today (14 May)...", which clearly looks like they added it belatedly after being made aware that the start date was missing.

And of course you knew about the offer by the 12th at the latest, so it seems very likely they know they're in the wrong and you'll have a good case to put forward.

Cefca

All the news results I see on google including a thread from this forum (https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6527981/santander-175-switch-offer-14th-may-2024), refer to the 14th May date so seems more likely that the OP switched without knowing about the offer then found about it afterwards and tried their luck.