Four and a half months ago, I applied to Nationwide to open a three-year fixed-rate Isa by transferring my cash Isa from Santander. Despite several phone calls, a visit to the local Nationwide office, and letters to Santander and Nationwide with threats to contact you or the ombudsman, the funds have still not been transferred successfully.
I realised things were going wrong when Santander wrote to me saying it had transferred the full £3,687.17 balance to Nationwide. Yet Nationwide said it had never received the cheque.
When I telephoned Santander, I was advised that a second cheque had been issued. I immediately telephoned Nationwide, who again said it had not received the money. It said it would contact Santander and have the second cheque stopped and a third one sent. Then I learnt Nationwide had discovered the second cheque and the money was to be credited to my account.
Unfortunately, it seems that Nationwide had, for once, acted promptly and had already contacted Santander and requested that the cheque be stopped. In the meantime I had received a certificate of investment from Nationwide showing I had invested my money nearly four months later than I had intended.
HD, Herts
The money was meant to go into a three-year fixed-rate individual savings account (Frisa) paying 4.3pc a year on a monthly basis. Rather than earning this though, the funds were in limbo yielding nothing.
Twice you, as a regular reader of the columns, had threatened Nationwide that you would approach me. As you say, you never thought you would have to. Even after I did become involved it took more than two months for the matter to be truly sorted.
Santander, which appears to be blameless in this matter, says it was obliged to issue seven cheques with the proceeds of your Isa. Although Nationwide does not acknowledge as many as this, it agrees that the service it dealt out is not of the level it aims to provide for its customers.
Nationwide says the initial cheque did not reach it. It then thought it had not received a second cheque and so asked Santander to stop it. After that it found that cheque and the accompanying transfer form had not been scanned onto its system. This had delayed the process. Nationwide now tried to credit the cheque, but, as it had already requested that a stop be put on it, naturally it bounced. As the matter dragged on, you report waking up at 5am worrying about it all.
After my involvement, Nationwide told you it had a £3,687 cheque representing your Isa money "in its hand" and the money was being invested. This being some five months after the Frisa was supposed to have been set up and £100 was sent for goodwill.
In fact this cheque turned out to be one of the ones Nationwide had told Santander it had not received and requested a stop be put on it.
It therefore went the way of its predecessor and bounced.
When you received a letter saying the money wasn't invested after all, you rang the contact who was supposed to be looking after this for you. You then learnt that, just two weeks after he had given you his contact details in case anything else went wrong, he had left the society.
After that a cheque, which had been issued a week after my initial involvement, was banked and did indeed clear. The Frisa was backdated and the monthly interest paid, albeit with the further hitch of a promised phone call not materialising promptly.
However, Nationwide had still failed to pick up on the fact that not getting the interest when it was due had meant that, to your detriment, you had to use money from elsewhere. Only with further prompting from me did the society now offer £100 over and above the £100 already paid. Flowers have also been sent.
Understandably Nationwide has lost your custom because of all this and you are putting your other money elsewhere.
I tried to transfer an Isa from another bank to my existing Santander Global Equity Fund. This took 15 weeks. At the same time, my wife transferred her Isa between two other banks and this was done in four weeks. I enclose three letters I have written to Santander asking for compensation for the delay. So far, I haven't had the courtesy of a reply.
FW, Warwicks
As the money was being moved into an investment where the market was rising, the bank's delay meant you ended up paying more than you would otherwise have done for the new units. The first response I had from Santander was that the matter had gone to the ombudsman. As this precludes me from taking a case up, I came back to you saying I couldn't help. In fact, it was a different complaint, which also involved an Isa delay caused by Santander, that you had taken to the ombudsman.
When I spoke to Santander, it admitted the delay was caused by an administrative error that was not identified for two months. My involvement led to it adding units worth £249 to the investment Isa to make up for those lost as a result of the delay. It also paid £70 in goodwill.
Meanwhile, the complaint with the ombudsman had run into its 10th month, with Santander contesting some of the service's findings, as it can do. The Financial Ombudsman Service says: "The majority of Isa complaints the ombudsman receives are sorted out within three months. However, when a business or consumer does not accept our initial findings and the case is appealed to an ombudsman it does take longer."
This, you say, is in stark contrast to the matter I dealt with for you, with a successful outcome in just two weeks. You would like to say, in fairness to Santander, that the initial advice to you was good, but administratively it did not act quickly enough.
I tried to open a new current account nine months ago for my 97-year-old mother-in-law. I have power of attorney, and she has asked that I deal with all aspects of these transactions and does not wish to receive any correspondence. I provide her with a monthly statement.
The account was opened through Alliance & Leicester, but the paperwork was still sent to my mother-in-law's home address. Despite their assurances that all direct debits, pension payments and so forth would be handled by them, this was not done because, apparently, they had not received the power of attorney.
I contacted the branch, which confirmed that all relevant documentation had been sent and straight away faxed a duplicate of the originals to the legal department of Alliance & Leicester's head office.
My mother-in-law's pension continued to be paid into her old, now closed, bank account with another bank. Even though Alliance & Leicester had instructed the pension authorities to redirect the payments, it had not supported this request with the relevant power of attorney documentation.
Seven months ago, I applied for an Isa on her behalf. The request was ignored and she was subjected to more paperwork.
ME,
Monmouth
The Alliance & Leicester brand is now being scrubbed off the high street to be fully integrated with Santander. How it will scrub up though, without its old branding, is something we can only speculate on.
The frustrations you experienced do not have an unfamiliar ring in the context of this bank. After the difficulties in getting correspondence sent to yourself, rather than your mother-in-law, you noticed that interest that should have been paid gross on a current account was actually being paid net. This, even though the appropriate R85 tax form had been completed and supplied to the bank.
Compensation of £50 had been paid to both of you, but the underlying issues remained unresolved, so you found yourself writing to me.
Now things seem to be as they should be. The £9.86 that had been wrongly deducted for tax has been repaid and another £50 sent for goodwill.
Time lag on Isa move
Some time ago now it was decided I should move £26,000 worth of cash Isas from Santander to another provider. It was all researched thoroughly and the paperwork completed well on time.
Santander has written a couple of stalling letters to mollify me, but what I want is the missing higher interest that I lost out on during the three-to-four-month period when the Santander people seemed to have lost my £26,000.
RB, Hants
The Isa transfer had been sorted out by the time you contacted me and £30 paid for goodwill.
The issue to do with the interest you had missed out on, however, remained unresolved. Two months more went by while I badgered Santander about it.
It was worth the wait though and now you have £567.35 for the lost interest, with £100 added for goodwill. Flowers are also being sent for when you come out of hospital after a hip operation.
