Cater Allen - Terminated account 60 days notice

[Glencky]

Really? NatWest's compares well to the competition?! I'm surprised! Only reason I ended up with them was after issues with Cater Allen I needed to sort something out quickly. They're not theones I have my personal current account with but I'd kept my student account open with them for years so I had a long history with them. The combination of that (me thinking that might help) and their free banking pushed me their way - and it's been fine so far. But I don't like the internet banking side much! it's irritating.

However although I have a basis for comparison on personal banking I have none for business banking so maybe they're a lot better than the competition!

[Calvin]

I have my business banking with santander and find their online banking ready to use. However I'm now out of my free first year and have to pay £7.50 a month.

[Glencky]

Thanks for the info, I'm storing it all away for the future!

[GunnerMilligan]

you need to contact the Ombudsman

I've just had exactly the same happen. We are a UK Ltd company (start-up going for 18 months). I just logged onto to make some payments and the account was not available. When I called, they told me they had issued a letter back in October giving us 60 days notice. We never received such a letter. When asking for a reason, the operator wouldn't give us one. Apparently the letter that was sent to us doesn't specify a reason either. This was a solvent business that had been reasonably quiet in the last month or so, but there is certainly nothing dodgy going on!!

I find it unfathomable that no one from CA thought it fit to give us a call and that we are not going to get an explanation. Some jumped up banker has made a sweeping decision to close specific company accounts that are legitimate businesses. This is causing innumerable problems getting paid by suppliers and paying our own suppliers.

They tried this on with me too.

My debit card started failing, embarrassing me. Then I found I couldn't access my account online. I called up Cater Allen and they said my account was terminated. After I gave them a piece of mind, they relented and said it was just "suspended". However, after many months of back-and-forth I couldn't get it fixed, so I ended up contacting the Ombudsman.

As soon as the Ombudsman contacted them, they reinstated my account and agreed to pay €20.

My case was small though. If your business has been seriously disrupted by the Santander takeover, you are probably entitled to a lot more compensation than that. A bank can't just go round shutting down accounts on a whim. It's insanity.

The form is simple enough:

https://help.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/help?form=gcw