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Post by bracknellboy on Aug 8, 2023 10:50:10 GMT
Those of you who use Cynergy will know of their annoying habit of constantly releasing new issues and leaving you "stranded" on old ones at lower rates. To add to the 'burden', once you close an account you can't self generate Tax Statements from them: consequently I have tended to leave old accounts open with a minimal balance while rolling the remainder forward into new issues, meaning I can go get interest statements more easily on them when I want them [yes this means any pending interest doesn't benefit from the higher interest rate on the new issues, but that is a 2nd or 3rd order effect].
Anyway, this morning I opened up their latest issue (I was actually in the process of withdrawing all of my main balance, but that is another story, and changed tack). I decided to do a tidy up on the old still open accounts, doing a full 'Internal transfer and close' (thereby capturing the outstanding interest as well as the meagre balances). I've ended up with some concerning anomalies. Two accounts seemed to have closed and transferred OK. However another one has not transferred but is showing up on my "closed accounts" list. And a final one had shown a substantial "accrued interest" balance, which has not been realised and is not showing as "accrued interest" on my new account.
I've had a chat with a very nice bloke at the bank, and they are now looking into it. However, if you are in a similar position to me, I'd be very cautious/careful in what you do and make sure you 'capture' the closing statements on each account before confirming action. The only reason I made a note of the 'interest' element on each is because I was chucking it into a spreadsheet for the 23-24 tax return (given the problems with closed accounts mentioned above). In hindsight I'd probably only do them with a decent time delay between them as well.
Its possible the back end systems will sort themselves out overnight I guess, but its concerning as in total the anomalous amount is about £1k. It also makes me wonder now whether there were any issues with other accounts I closed historically and didn't notice.
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Post by overthehill on Aug 8, 2023 12:09:44 GMT
I tried opening a new fixed saver account last week but it didn't work out. I already had a userid and previous account number but it wouldn't let me register the authenticate app on a different phone without calling them (no time for that) and therefore I couldn't login either.
I created a new application from scratch but didn't hear anything back in email or text for days. I think maybe they've been phoning me this week. TOO LATE.
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Post by bracknellboy on Aug 8, 2023 13:35:11 GMT
I tried opening a new fixed saver account last week but it didn't work out. I already had a userid and previous account number but it wouldn't let me register the authenticate app on a different phone without calling them (no time for that) and therefore I couldn't login either.
I created a new application from scratch but didn't hear anything back in email or text for days. I think maybe they've been phoning me this week. TOO LATE.
I've recently changed phones (in the last 7 days) and had the same issue: You can only have the app on one phone. I haven't yet re-registered it, as you have to de-register it on the first phone before hand. And I have a 'problem' with my new phone which means I may yet end up doing a factory reset and rebuild (yawn yawn yawn). But I still have my old phone so I'm OK..... Yes, you have to phone them: I checked that with them today when I was speaking to them.
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Post by westcountryfunder on Aug 8, 2023 15:10:04 GMT
Those of you who use Cynergy will know of their annoying habit of constantly releasing new issues and leaving you "stranded" on old ones at lower rates. To add to the 'burden', once you close an account you can't self generate Tax Statements from them: consequently I have tended to leave old accounts open with a minimal balance while rolling the remainder forward into new issues, meaning I can go get interest statements more easily on them when I want them [yes this means any pending interest doesn't benefit from the higher interest rate on the new issues, but that is a 2nd or 3rd order effect]. Not sure that I really understand your problem. I agree the constant new issues are irritating, but I can live with that. You can easily see just how much interest you have earned when you 'transfer to new account and close'; it's included in the transferred balance. Can't say I'm fussed about absence of a Tax Statement; no-one has ever asked to me produce one as evidence.
Apart from the very minor irritation mentioned, I'm very happy with Cynergy.
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spiral
Member of DD Central
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Post by spiral on Aug 8, 2023 15:20:42 GMT
once you close an account you can't self generate Tax Statements from them: This used to be the case up until a couple of years back. Now if you select the arrow next to the closed account and choose the option "confirmation of interest paid" you can manually enter the dates required and press the "request confirmation of interest paid". Then click on "view confirmation of interest paid". This generates a certificate that you can save.
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Post by bracknellboy on Aug 8, 2023 15:28:58 GMT
once you close an account you can't self generate Tax Statements from them: This used to be the case up until a couple of years back. Now if you select the arrow next to the closed account and choose the option "confirmation of interest paid" you can manually enter the dates required and press the "request confirmation of interest paid". Then click on "view confirmation of interest paid". This generates a certificate that you can save.
ah yes, you might be right. I think I learnt that once, and then forgot it again. :-)
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Post by bracknellboy on Aug 8, 2023 16:58:58 GMT
Those of you who use Cynergy will know of their annoying habit of constantly releasing new issues and leaving you "stranded" on old ones at lower rates. To add to the 'burden', once you close an account you can't self generate Tax Statements from them: consequently I have tended to leave old accounts open with a minimal balance while rolling the remainder forward into new issues, meaning I can go get interest statements more easily on them when I want them [yes this means any pending interest doesn't benefit from the higher interest rate on the new issues, but that is a 2nd or 3rd order effect]. Not sure that I really understand your problem. I agree the constant new issues are irritating, but I can live with that. You can easily see just how much interest you have earned when you 'transfer to new account and close'; it's included in the transferred balance. Can't say I'm fussed about absence of a Tax Statement; no-one has ever asked to me produce one as evidence.
Apart from the very minor irritation mentioned, I'm very happy with Cynergy.
well the "warning/be aware" of the title is clearly the para after the quoted one: Namely the problem I've hit when closing several accounts in succession. And as I noted in that second para, the interest is stated when doing a close.
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spiral
Member of DD Central
Posts: 967
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Post by spiral on Aug 9, 2023 7:02:17 GMT
I have had a few different issues with Cynergy over the years. Most issues I have with institutions tend to revolve around the same thing but with Cynergy each has been different.
Firstly a couple of years back I made a withdrawal only to return the funds later that day. This triggered an AML check which resulted in me having to send them statements to prove the reason for the transfers.
Secondly a newly opened account got triggered for AML checks. They wanted a verified statement proving source of funds. The stupid thing here was the funds were already with them but when opening an account, the don’t have that as an option for source of fund. The customer service rep I was speaking to could see my point and said he would go back to the AML team. They wouldn’t have any of it and still insisted on verification. The next CSR I spoke to escalated it to a more senior person. The account was opened by the end of that day but had taken 2 weeks in total.
Thirdly last year I noticed that an account I opened at a weekend did not start accruing interest until the Monday from an internal transfer. Their first response was this is correct. I argued this isn’t right for internal transfers. After a couple of back and forth messages I was told the original responder was wrong and you do get interest from the weekend only for me to go back and state but the whole point of my argument was this was not happening. There was deadly silence for a couple of weeks so I messaged them again only to receive a holding “we are still looking into it” message. This carried on for nearly 2 months before someone got back to me and state they had identified an error in the way their system was calculating interest. As the problem was system wide (and affected closed accounts) presumably because it had never been right, it would take a while to fix. I reported this issue to them at the end of Feb last year and it took them until end of Aug to rectify the lost interest and pay compensation to everyone that had been affected.
Lastly, I had a weekend deposit of 3K held up over a bank holiday weekend thus taking 3 days to reach my account.
Despite all this I do still like Cynergy, I just don’t make deposits at weekends. I like the speed of deposits/withdrawals although I must admit they have slowed considerably in the last 6 months or so. Rather than being within 5 minutes it tends to be within 2 hours now. I also like the fact they do appear to listen to their customers. I requested (with my 3rd issue) that the brought in an option for text notifications to advise when you have received a secure message. Initially they said no need because they usually respond within 2 working days so I would just need to login a couple of days later. I pointed them to the fact that many of my messages regarding point 3 were never answered, I had to keep chasing up and even some of the “we’re still looking into it” messages took over a week to come back. Towards the end of last year, text notifications for secure messages were introduced.
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