Santander bank account closed with no notice

MrPaulus

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82152355#Comment_82152355

I'd be very interested to see the letter and the address they used. Previously letters went to a professional mail forwarding service. If they were stupid enough to try to send the letter to India, it may never arrive.

As part of the most recent KYC interview, I verified all my addresses. If they mistakenly recorded them, the fault is theirs.

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82149395#Comment_82149395

Santander sent a, ‘where do you live letter?’ to their UK address and deliberately didn’t add it to their electronic inbox.

I wonder whether that (if an accurate representation of Santander's policy) is compatible with the FCA Principles for Businesses. In particular (perhaps) PRIN 2A.2.8 - 'A firm must avoid causing foreseeable harm to retail customers'.

If a firm has reason to think a customer doesn't live at the postal address they have on file, and it is normal practice for them to add communications to the customer's electronic inbox, then making a deliberate decision not to communicate in the 'normal' way - which could be reasonably foreseen to mean the customer doesn't get the communication and hence has their account closed as a result (or has other communications going to an address they don't live at any more) - could cause harm to the customer.

I can understand why Santander might want to do this, the issue is whether it is fully compliant with the consumer duty and FCA principles.

Although the customer has a responsibility to keep their contact details up to date, people do make mistakes and forget to do things. Banks (including Santander) are pressuring customers to go paperless, so they get used to communications being electronic. To deliberately send a communication by post only (if true and accurate), though clever, feels a bit off.

MrPaulus

Just to add to this:

Their KYC process is 100% by phone. There's no option for email communication other than uploading documents.

This 'account closure' process is 100% by post.

Edit: The complaint process generated both a secure message online, and an email telling me to read it! See, they can do it if they want!

Maegi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82150261#Comment_82150261

Their standard T&Cs clearly states eligibility 'For all accounts you must be a UK resident' and 'You’ve broken our agreement in a serious way' they can close immediately.

They could therefore close immedately once the account holder is no longer a UK resident; if they so choose to.

born_again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82148483#Comment_82148483

Immediate closure hints at something more serious. Which is well within reason & FOS would support this.

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82153357#Comment_82153357

If you read the OP's most recent posts, it turns out Santander intended to give the OP 90 day's notice, so it wasn't immediate closure, and therefore unlikely to be something more serious.

Also, it stretches credibility for Santander to claim that someone living 'mostly' outside the UK for 'a while' - in full knowledge of Santander - has broken the T&C's 'in a serious way' justifying immediate closure without any prior notice. This would appear to be confirmed by Santander themselves deciding to give the OP 90 days notice… which seems to be a fair and sensible approach, provided Santander made an FCA rulebook-compliant attempt to give notice.

friolento

It appears that Santander has sent the 90-day notice by post only and has not uploaded a copy of the notice to the account holder’s online/app Documents folder.

I would regard this as an oversight, particularly if the account holder had opted for paperless communications. That said, it may have been a deliberate decision, and there could be a legal or regulatory reason why the notice was required to be sent by post rather than provided digitally.

In any event, however, Santander could arguably not be held responsible for the physical delivery of the notice once it had been sent by post. Equally, I would be doubtful that compensation would be available simply because a copy of the notice had not also been uploaded to the account holder’s digital Documents folder.

Chief_of_Staffy

And yet if you are required to notify them of something and they claim not to have received the letter, the onus is on you to prove otherwise. You'd imagine that for something important like this, bearing in mind around 15 million letters go missing every year in the Royal Mail system, they might opt for the tracked option. Your only consolation is that the investigation into your complaint cost them more than the extra £2 for sending the letter tracked.