Savings Help and Guidance

We have brought together answers to some of your most commonly asked questions within our Savings section.

If you still can’t find what you are looking for or if you have any questions/problems that you would like to discuss, please contact us and let us know.

We are committed to helping people towards a safe and secure financial future. One important part of this is helping you stay safe against common fraud. View our Protection From Common Fraud page for tips on staying safe.

We are committed to ensure our service is as accessible as possible to suit your individual needs. From our website to our literature, view more about what we are doing to help you with accessibility requirements below. If you have any suggestions about anything we can do to improve, please contact us on marketing@harpendenbs.co.uk

Branches
All our Branches have entrance doors that are suitable for wheelchair access and have push button door opening facilities. Our Banking Halls have either tables or writing shelves at wheelchair height. All Branches are equipped with portable hearing loops. Upon request, our Branch staff will always come round to the Banking Hall to assist any customer with their transactions.

Website

Where possible, we follow the guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB).

We have also designed our website so it’s easy for you to use the navigation and to find the information you need. If you get stuck, you’ll find a site map and contact page on our site.

Even fully-sighted people can find reading text on a screen difficult, so we have chosen an easy-to-see font type, size and colour.

Adobe Acrobat is required to view and print PDF documents that appear on this website, we have published a link under all such documents for a free download.

If you use a screen reader
Not everyone uses a traditional browser, so we’ve designed our sites to work with screen readers. We use text in ALT tags to describe images. We don’t use frames which are difficult for screen readers and special browsers to interpret.

Leaflets and Information
To request any Harpenden Building Society literature in an alternative format please contact marketing@harpendenbs.co.uk

We understand that dealing with a bereavement can be a difficult time, and we would like to make this process for you as easy as possible. This guide below gives you information about how to notify us that someone has passed away, what will happen to their account and how to release money to help with probate fees, funeral costs and inheritance tax.

Registering a death with us
A) Before you have the death certificate
If you don’t have the death certificate yet and want to safeguard the account and stop any correspondence being sent out and addressed to the person who has passed away, you can inform us in any of the ways detailed below:

-You can visit us in any of our branches
-Or call our Member Services team on 01582 765411
-Or complete our ‘Notice of Bereavement’ form* and send it to us at Member Services Team, Harpenden Building Society, FREEPOST SB165, Mardall House, 9-11 Vaughan Road, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 4HU

Here’s what we will need from you:
-Full name, date of birth, date of death and the Harpenden Building Society account details of the person who has passed away. This will enable us to identify their account;
-Full name, address and one piece of identification of the Personal Representative. This is the person we will be corresponding with. If we are to contact a Solicitors at any time, then their contact details will be sufficient;
-The passbook(s), or a completed ‘Lost Passbook’ form to be completed for each account. Please note the £1.00 administration fee will be waived.

What happens once your notification has been received?
We will update our records. If we have not received the death certificate within 30 days of receiving your notice, we will write to the Personal Representative or Solicitors as requested.

B) If you have the death certificate
We will require a certified copy, or original death certificate, once you have obtained it. This can be sent to us by either;

-You can visit us in any of our branches
-Send it to us at; Member Services, Harpenden Building Society FREEPOST SB165, Mardall House, 9-11 Vaughan Road, Harpenden, AL5 4HU

Here’s what we will need from you:
-Full name, date of birth, date of death and the Harpenden Building Society account details of the person who has passed away. This will enable us to identify their account;
-Full name, address and one piece of identification of the Personal Representative. This is the person we will be corresponding with. If we are to contact a Solicitors, then their contact details will be sufficient;
-The passbook(s), or a completed ‘Lost Passbook’ form to be completed for each account. Please note the £1.00 administration fee will be waived.

We will write to the Personal Representative or Solicitor, as requested within 7-10 days with details of how to close the account(s).

Releasing funds to pay for Probate fees/a funeral inheritance tax.
Once we have received notification of the passing of one of our members, and we are in receipt of the death certificate, you can request funds to help pay for probate fees, a funeral and/or inheritance tax.

In all cases we will require the original invoice (IHT423 form in the case of inheritance tax) and a completed ‘Request for Probate, Funeral Fees, Inheritance Tax’* form to be completed by the Personal Representative.

Where to send these details to:
-You can visit us in any of our branches
-Send it to us at; Member Services Team, Harpenden Building Society, FREEPOST SB165, Mardall House, 9-11 Vaughan Road, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 4HU

Closing the account(s)
To close the account(s) we will require the relevant sections of the ‘Request to close account form’* to be completed and returned to us.

You can send the completed form to us either by:
You can visit us in any of our branches
Send it to us at this address; Member Services Team, Harpenden Building Society, FREEPOST SB165, Mardall House, 9-11 Vaughan Road, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 4HU

* All forms and information sheets are available as a PDF download within our resources section.

As the UK’s largest advice provider, the Citizens Advice offers a range of money advice services which may be of help to you. Advice covers various areas such as debt, budgeting, cost of living, pensions and mortgage problems.

Harpenden Building Society is committed to providing a first class service. We recognise that from time to time mistakes may occur and we then fall short of the high standards to which we aspire. We want to know about these occasions, so that we can learn from them and use this knowledge to continue to enhance our service.

Your feedback is very important. If at any time you are dissatisfied, please tell us straightaway so that we can investigate and put right any mistake or omission, promptly.

PROCEDURE

If you want to make a complaint, you can do this by:

SAVINGS

-Calling in at any branch and speaking to a member of staff
-Calling our Member Services Team on 01582 765411
-Contacting the Branch Manager at your branch, either by phone or letter
-Or email us at: memberservices@harpendenbs.co.uk

MORTGAGES

-Calling the Mortgage Department on 01582 463133
-Emailing the Mortgage Department at mortgages@harpendenbs.co.uk

GENERAL

-Calling in at any branch and speaking to a member of staff
-Calling our Member Services Team on 01582 765411

Emailing us at: memberservices@harpendenbs.co.uk

OUR COMPLAINTS HANDLING PROCESS

We will do all that we can to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible and ideally by the close of business on the third working day, following the receipt of your complaint. If your complaint is resolved within three working days, we will send you a letter that acknowledges your complaint and confirms that the Society has now resolved it to your satisfaction and the matter is considered closed.

If we are not able to do this, we will send you a written acknowledgement, at the close of the fifth working day after receipt, to confirm we have received your complaint and to provide contact details of the person who is dealing with the matter. We will keep you informed and once our investigations are complete we will provide you with our final response in writing.

Complaints about payment transactions or a payment account

If your complaint (or part of it) concerns a payment transaction or a payment account, we will endeavour to deal with your complaint within 15 working days. If circumstances beyond our reasonable control prevent us from sending you our final response to your complaint in this time frame, we will instead send you a holding response explaining clearly why this is the case and specifying when we will be able to. In those circumstances, you will receive our final response within 35 working days.

Complaints about other matters

If within eight weeks of receiving your complaint we are not able to provide you with a final response, we will write to you again to tell you this, informing you why we are not in a position to, and let you know when we expect to be able to do so. If we do not deal with your complaint to your satisfaction, you can refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Their address is as follows:
Financial Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower
London
E14 9SR

Telephone: 0300 123 9 123 or 0800 0234567
E-mail: complaint.info@financial–ombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

You can also access the Financial Ombudsman Service online, but only if you applied for goods and services online and you reside in the European Union. You can access this alternative service at: www.ec.europa.eu/odr and you must quote our e-mail address which is memberservices@harpendenbs.co.uk

If you choose to submit your complaint in this way, it will be forwarded to the Financial Ombudsman Service. It can take longer for the Financial Ombudsman Service to receive your complaint if you submit it online, so we would recommend that you go to them directly, to save you time.

Our aim is to resolve any complaint reasonably and speedily. The person handling your complaint will have appropriate knowledge, experience and authority to deal with the issues that you have raised.

If you are not satisfied with the Society’s final response, you have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge – but you must do so within six months of the date of this letter.

If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if the Ombudsman believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances.

You may also be able to submit complaints to the Financial Conduct Authority.

Your Suggestions
We always welcome any suggestions or comments you may have on how we can improve our service to our customers. You can contact us on memberservices@harpendenbs.co.uk and we’ll take a look.

All three of our branches; Harpenden, Radlett, and Leighton Buzzard currently have their opening hours, locations and contact details displayed on their individual pages within the Your Harpenden section. Our Head Office is open and operating from 9am – 5pm from Monday to Friday.