Bankia blocked account - Page 4

Hi This just happened to me ..I am in UK for funeral ..is there anyone who can help I emailed Them waiting ok response ..

I am in UK ...I pay tax TG through work n rent my hse..no online banking ...n.i.e.n passport in date 

Happened to me last year. They won't cut off your electricity. You can pay over the phone even from England 

Hi Paula this happened to me in my Deutsche bank account over Christmas, I only found out my bank account had been blocked when Iberdrola emailed me and said the latest electricity bill had been refused by the bank. I have a banking app so I checked my account and realised no direct debits had been paid in the past month.There was plenty of Euros in the account so I knew that was not the problem. 

I emailed Deutsche bank and sure enough they replied and said my account had been blocked, because they needed yet another copy of my wife’s passport and non residential form corrected to show she was a non tax payer. I was fuming and am visiting the branch tomorrow to complain. 

It seems rather than just contact their customers to get us to respond to admin requests, the banks in Spain think it’s a good idea to block our accounts to get our attention. By the way direct debits were blocked as well. I took photos of my wife’s passport and the residential form and emailed them to the bank and they unblocked my account after 7 days! 

In the meantime I contacted Iberdrola and my internet supplier,  both were very understanding because this seems to happen a lot with various banks in SpaIn. As I didn’t want to fall behind on my bills, both companies allowed me to pay my outstanding bill by credit card pending the unblocking of my account. 

Quite often now banks are required to resubmit forms and identification as part of a regulatory requirement in relation to money laundering, to have up to date details on their clients, so the banks will need to revisit this with customers more often than they used to. Part of the problem seems to be that they are not efficient in checking what documents they already have from their customers and use the blocking of accounts to get our attention. 

I can highly recommend having the banking application on your phone, we don’t do much with it, but it enables me to check when bills have been paid and that I have been correctly credited when I have transferred money in. 

Finally you can also get Iberdrola to email you your electricity bill and once this is set up, they have been good at contacting me if there are any problems with bill payment, it’s another great way of remotely tracking that all is well for your property in Spain. 

Ian 

I had a similar situation over a year back. Iberdrola did not cut me off though the direct debit was not honoured by the bank bankia.  I went to Iberdrola office which informed me that they allow a couple of months before they cut you off. However my internet was cut off immediately on the non payment. Wish Bankia informs you by email if they freeze the account for some reason.

Banking is expensive in Spain and not much care to look after their customers.

Thanks for your response. I cannot remember seeing any messages when I logged on.. I can see the messages from Santander. It happened that my internet was not working and therefore went to the Ole office which is just next to the bankia. I was informed that the direct debit had not been honoured ( which was for quite few other customers too). I cannot see such a situation ever happening in UK as such publicity will bad for their business. Shame that bank charges are inversely proportional to the service we get in Spain from the banks.

Good luck paula