Consumer complaint received 2020-04-24
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Closing an account — Company closed your account
Company: SANTANDER BANK, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (MA)

When your own personal bank freezes you out And doesn't even have the politeness to inform you at any point! 

In particular in this age of coronavirus, when nobody really wants to take your cash, touch those bills and or receive any in return your credit card, your debit card takes on extra importance. When suddenly and mysteriously the spigot to your own funds is turned off, how does that make you feel? We all talk about " rights '', what about the right to access your own money and use it when, how, and if you need. 

Santander Bank has done that to me for the last week, unabated, despite three personal visits to one of the few remaining branches open, multiple phone calls to various units including the fraud-team within the bank 's " back offices ''. 

All this came about not for any actual fraud, but for a minor error for which I ran into the bank ASAP to explain. Instead of grabbing a check for my business account to deposit into my personal account, I effectively made the " short-circuit '' mistake of grabbing a check from that very same personal account to deposit into it. This is akin to taking money from your left pocket and attempting to put it in your right. The check was for more than the account held, so became an issue. If it had been for a lesser amount, I'm not sure this would have mattered. 

In any event, I replaced the frivolous, supercilious yellow check with the correct ( pink ) " BUSINESS '' check and all should have been good, particularly after I explained it to the bank manager, but no, there apparently the troubles only began. It was fully 10 days before the account was unfrozen. The fraud investigator was very polite and told me today that he only just today ( 10 days after the fact! ) received the matter on his desk. So my account was frozen and the actual complaint sat in limbo within the maze of the banks communication system without ever coming to anybodys attention for 10 days while my account was unusable. This is derelict. 

They have no right to essentially take my money and not give me access to it without informing me in the first place, telling me Im under investigation in any way, delineating the problem or explaining the timetable for its rectification. If there had been some type of fraud, wouldn't it have been nice if they had told thhe customer, me, that there was something fishy? Other credit card and bank accounts always do that if somebody's trying to finagle money out of your account from XXXX or XXXX or something. I received precisely ZERO messages of any kind, no texts, no emails, no phone calls NOTHING telling me that the account had been frozen and certainly nothing telling me why or for how long or what manner of recourse there was. 

This is peremptory and meretricious on the banks part and clearly something is wrong with their communication system top to bottom, that it takes 10 days to adjudicate a matter that in actuality takes a few seconds to realize is " nothing '', and for that entire time not to tell the customer anything at all despite the fact that he goes into the bank repeatedly to explain and then request opening of the account. 

Here is a longer explanation that I wrote up somewhat in diary form. 
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