Santander no longer paying cashback for Octopus Gas & Electricity, Hopefully being resolved?

hgt

Will have to see what happens next month. Some people appear to be getting a positive outcome from Santander. I asked for my complaint to be escalated, to which they responded that I will no longer receive cashback from an Octopus DD (as long as they continue to use Gocardless), but Santander won't remove Octopus from their list as Santander will pay cashback if Octopus go back to the old method of collecting DD's. 

Then as I didn't respond within 3 hours, they closed my complaint and suggested I report to the FOS if I'm not happy. Which seems very drastic for a few quid!

MSE_James

Our utilities team has been looking into this and has been in touch with Octopus and Santander.

In summary, we understand that Santander has now updated its systems to recognise the new GoCardless-originated Octopus DD details.

We also understand that Santander is checking whether affected customers received the correct cashback, and that adjustments will be made where necessary.

friolento

Fantastic, thank you for the update @MSE_James

danco

Thanks for this, I had missed the original email from Octopus and its effect on Santander.

I note that Octopus say that they started to move to GoCardless in January. The exact date of the move will vary between different people. My DD has been Octopus through April, and shows as GC re Octopus starting 15 April, which means the first payment is in May

Sea_Shell

danco said:

Thanks for this, I had missed the original email from Octopus and its effect on Santander.

I note that Octopus say that they started to move to GoCardless in January. The exact date of the move will vary between different people. My DD has been Octopus through April, and shows as GC re Octopus starting 15 April, which means the first payment is in May

To be fair, I'm not sure the Octopus email alerted us to the fact this would cause an issue with Santander 😉

Tony5896

I have an Edge account, my Cashback was paid as of today. 

goatfaced

I got my cashback yesterday, but my direct debit has no mention of GC yet. 

subjecttocontract

This all seems a bit of a mystery. I'm with Octopus and am still getting my 2% cashback.

TheBanker

subjecttocontract said:

This all seems a bit of a mystery. I'm with Octopus and am still getting my 2% cashback.

It's not really, the post from MSE_James explains it above.

Octopus are in the process of switching their Direct Debit provider. It seems they're doing this gradually rather than switching everyone on the same day. Santander were not aware of this and did not recognise Direct Debits claimed through the new provider (Go Cardless) as being to Octopus, so customers whose Direct Debit had switched did not receive their cashback.

This situation was made worse by Santander's staff / chatbot telling customers that the new Direct Debits did not qualify for cashback.

Santander have now rectified this so the new Direct Debits will qualify going forwards, and are in the process of correcting any accounts that have missed out.

tiffin1234

Update from me: I went back to Octopus (after reading the most recent post from MSE_James) and asked them to confirm that they would be making good my missed cashback payment for this month. Octopus replied yesterday to say that they would not be doing this as the problem was with Santander. Santander had already told me they would not be paying my missed cashback for this month (only future cashback), as the problem was with Octopus. So it seems those who missed out this month are just going to have to lump it. If anyone has had a different response, I would be v interested to hear it!