Santander COP workaround

friolento

1spiral said:

Rollinghome said:

An identifier can sometimes be placed in the reference field, but not for payees that require an account number there.

I have a Joint account with First Direct and this causes us problems because for these institutions, usually the same sort code and account number are used. FD in their wisdom will not let you have 2 different "nicknames" for accounts with same sort code and account number, although they will let you have different descriptions in the reference field.

I couldn't get the CS to understand the issue. They didn't seem to get that both get listed with the latest "nickname" (the first one gets overwritten) which is totally useless to me if I want one listed for me and the other for my spouse. We end up with 2 accounts listed with the same name and need to know the different references for each of us to differentiate.

It would be useful if they had a more intelligent nickname implementation but you can still bypass their limitations.

Like with many (most? / all?) current account providers, at FD you can set up any number of payees for the same sort code and account number, with different or the same reference numbers. You just have to use a different payee name, and ignore the COP mismatch.

Descrabled

First Direct and HSBC both have this peculiar habit of changing the name of the payee.

I set a payee as "Ms Des 1" for account at saffron. Next I paid "Mr Des 1" to saffron. Months later paid "Ms Des 2" and then "Mr Des 2" for different accounts at saffron.

The payees, on our joint account at HSBC, are listed as 4 off to "Mr Des 2" with 4 different reference numbers instead of the names originally input.

I concur with 1spiral that this makes for confusion and mistakes.

mebu60

PloughmansLunch said:

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.

Two weeks on and West Brom finally opened my account. Even then had to ring up to set up a PIN to be able to access the online account. It is a personal account with sort code and individual account number, no business holding account involved or reference required. 

So to Santander with bated breath to fund West Brom. Checked COP with me as the payee, all fine. Went back and changed payee to West Brom. Selected 'continue anyway' after the COP fail. All chuntered through fine and funds in West Brom. Like it always used to. Hopefully the blocking of the DF Capital payment was a one-off. Though that had a silver lining with £75 compo after the payment they made for me was also blocked by their automated system but they failed to act on it until I rang up to enquire why it hadn't gone out after several days.