Santander COP workaround

mebu60

Opened account with DF Capital yesterday. Went to make initial deposit this morning from my Santander current account. Used COP to check it was me. Tick. Then went back and changed the payee name to DF Capital as don't want all my payees to be mebu60 as I won't be able to easily distinguish which savings institution I am paying into from payee list. Have done this previously and pushed the payment through. Now it blocks it at the end as having failed COP. 
After several attempts ended up ringing in. After a bit of a heated argument finally got the person to understand why I wanted to use the institution name. She assured me I could push it through by pressing continue at the end. So I repeated previous attempt with exactly the same result. She has set up the payment for me (though not yet on transactions, half expecting a call from fraud team!). Has anyone successfully come up with a workaround? I will (hopefully) have a West Brom account to fund once they've done their checks of my photo id and signature. Would very much prefer the payee name on the list to be West Brom rather than mebu60.

masonic

Suggest people apply some pressure on Santander to introduce a payee "nickname" field, which several other banks already support.

mebu60

masonic said:

Suggest people apply some pressure on Santander to introduce a payee "nickname" field, which several other banks already support.

That would work, will include your suggestion when I email CEO later. Want to see my transaction completed before I write just in case there's further issues. I do now have a new payee of DF Capital! But no payment out showing yet let alone received at the other end.
The thought I had is that if COP check is passed then if you go back and only change payee name the pass is held.  

ColdIron

mebu60 said:

The thought I had is that if COP check is passed then if you go back and only change payee name the pass is held.  

It used to work that way at Chase until recently but now they check again after you change it and won't progress further

They do however have a very useful 'nickname' feature where you can change the name/description of the account but you can only do it after the payee has been set up

Banks that don't provide some sort of nickname facility are becoming increasingly problematic though most of mine are historic and continue to work

friolento

It is still working for me in the app. Have not tried it online as I prefer the app.

I first go through a COP check for my new payee, using my actual name.

Once COP match is found, I press Change next to the   new payee details.

Then press “Add new payee” again. The data you entered previously is prefilled. Change your name to something meaningful, go through the COP again and decline all those mismatch messages. Et voila, you end up with a COP-checked shiny new payee 😎

I am not surprised Santander CS don’t know about this - and even if they do, they are probably not allowed to tell customers about it.

friolento

ColdIron said:

Banks that don't provide some sort of nickname facility are becoming increasingly problematic though most of mine are historic and continue to work

I have a large number of accounts at different firms but have yet to come across one that actually forces me to use the real account name. You may have to fiddle around a bit, like in the case of Santander, but I find that all of them allow you to override the COP check, after having warned you multiple times.

Not having a nickname for payees is therefore no problem for me. I even use my payee naming convention where nicknames are possible.

PloughmansLunch

mebu60 said:

I will (hopefully) have a West Brom account to fund once they've done their checks of my photo id and signature. Would very much prefer the payee name on the list to be West Brom rather than mebu60.

No worries there - I think you will end up with a West Brom payee as they use a holding account, and you'll use a payment reference to identify your individual account.

molerat

I set up several Santander payments the other day and changed the name to what I wanted without any problems - it warned me the world would end but allowed it.  It is a bit ridiculous though - do the people that write these programs actually think about what they are doing - silly question as I know the answer !

eskbanker

molerat said:

I set up several Santander payments the other day and changed the name to what I wanted without any problems - it warned me the world would end but allowed it.  It is a bit ridiculous though - do the people that write these programs actually think about what they are doing - silly question as I know the answer !

It's a not a programming issue, but a deliberate industry protocol design, i.e. that CoP was implemented to offer a validation service but that it's not intended to prevent the use of a different payee name if the payer chooses to proceed, at their own risk.

mebu60

eskbanker said:

molerat said:

I set up several Santander payments the other day and changed the name to what I wanted without any problems - it warned me the world would end but allowed it.  It is a bit ridiculous though - do the people that write these programs actually think about what they are doing - silly question as I know the answer !

It's a not a programming issue, but a deliberate industry protocol design, i.e. that CoP was implemented to offer a validation service but that it's not intended to prevent the use of a different payee name if the payer chooses to proceed, at their own risk.

Was given the option to proceed at my own risk then at the very end Santander blocked it due to COP not matching. The Santander person also said its not a problem to continue so did it again (4th time for me) with the same result despite her insistence it would be fine. The payment she set up two hours ago still hasn't left my account.

Interesting what @friolento says about a 'change' option for the payee name in the app. That would be neat for online too.

eskbanker

mebu60 said:

eskbanker said:

molerat said:

I set up several Santander payments the other day and changed the name to what I wanted without any problems - it warned me the world would end but allowed it.  It is a bit ridiculous though - do the people that write these programs actually think about what they are doing - silly question as I know the answer !

It's a not a programming issue, but a deliberate industry protocol design, i.e. that CoP was implemented to offer a validation service but that it's not intended to prevent the use of a different payee name if the payer chooses to proceed, at their own risk.

Was given the option to proceed at my own risk then at the very end Santander blocked it due to COP not matching. The Santander person also said its not a problem to continue so did it again (4th time for me) with the same result despite her insistence it would be fine. The payment she set up two hours ago still hasn't left my account.

Yes, I was responding to the other poster who was commenting on the apparent stupidity of being able to circumvent the CoP check, but yours is a different issue where you're not being permitted to do that even though you should be.