Throwing the dummy out of the pram

ecoman

Well-Known Member
Since our old bank - with whom we got on well - amalgamated with Santander, our banking turned into utter chaos.:confused:.

Polite correspondence from us to them produced nil results, so after a couple of months of this I advised my wife that we should change banks - which we did.

We requested Santander to transfer all of our direct debits to the new bank and gave them all the details - then things went quiet. :-|.

Now we are receiving letters from some of the various firms we deal-with saying that they are sorry that we have cancelled our accounts and informing us that we have outstanding debts as it appears that Santander have simply closed down the accounts and not transferred the information to the new bank as we asked then to do.:oops:

We are rectifying this situation, but if I was a cynical person I might imagine that either vindictiveness is involved, or total ineptitude of the sort we experienced before we changed banks.

I see their name plastered on just about everything now, but frankly, they had their chance and their behaviour towards this customer has been extremely lacking in any sort of business manners.
 
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I tried to change current accounts last year, the new bank initially said "leave it all to us", after a few weeks it was apparent they had done nothing at all.

I am still with the original bank.

Complete shower of bastages the lot of them.
 
I had a very similar situation good relationship with Abbey but all changed when they became Santander so they left me no choice but to move to BARCLAYS they were also supposed to transfer my direct debits they did not bother and left me with months of sorting out shitey letters from my creditors.needless to say I took them off my christmas card list.
 
A mate's wife died a couple of years back. She had an account with Santander. As part of winding up her estate he tried to close the account. Quite simple you would think. No, the hassle he got in trying to close this account and to include the interest to date was horrendous and the number of times they phoned his house asking to speak to his wife was totally out of order.
 
Since our old bank - with whom we got on well - amalgamated with Santander, our banking turned into utter chaos.:confused:.

Polite correspondence from us to them produced nil results, so after a couple of months of this I advised my wife that we should change banks - which we did.

We requested Santander to transfer all of our direct debits to the new bank and gave them all the details - then things went quiet. :-|.

Now we are receiving letters from some of the various firms we deal-with saying that they are sorry that we have cancelled our accounts and informing us that we have outstanding debts as it appears that Santander have simply closed down the accounts and not transferred the information to the new bank as we asked then to do.:oops:

We are rectifying this situation, but if I was a cynical person I might imagine that either vindictiveness is involved, or total ineptitude of the sort we experienced before we changed banks.

I see their name plastered on just about everything now, but frankly, they had their chance and their behaviour towards this customer has been extremely lacking in any sort of business manners.

I had exactly the same experience with Abbey/Santander a few years ago. After loads of hassle, I finally managed to switch to Halifax then changed jobs and moved house only to find the nearest Halifax is about 50 miles away!

Changed again now to Barclays which was a little more straightforward.

I agree they are all as bad as one another. If you really want to get me started ask about telephone and interweb banking!

JC
 
When people realise that the only thing any bank wants is your money and they don,t give a flying **** about you, people will get on better with them,

Just use them to store your money (I was going to say safely but thats a good laugh )

They must get there managers from the same place as Firearm departments get there's
 
A mate's wife died a couple of years back. She had an account with Santander. As part of winding up her estate he tried to close the account. Quite simple you would think. No, the hassle he got in trying to close this account and to include the interest to date was horrendous and the number of times they phoned his house asking to speak to his wife was totally out of order.

I had this experience too when my Father died, Its a good job that the idiots that I had to deal with were on the other end of the phone otherwise there would have been blood spilled. To be fair, the one thing that was easy was dealing with his shotgun cert etc, Northants Police were spot on. JC
 
Oh well i'm glad it's not just me. I allways had an account with Bradford and Bingley and they got bought out by Santander. i have a Santander acount in Spain and it had allways worked well so thought i'd stay with santander over here. 3 times in a row they sent a bank card and PIN number to my old address even though i went in and saw them twice and politely explained the issue and told them i could have been robbed if it wasnt for the fact someone at work lives in my old house. the last time i went in and explained that if it happened again we would close both mine and my wifes account and then we would go to alliance a leicster and shut our buisness acount with them. Guess what, they did it again about a week ago so i'm off into town tomorrow to move everything over to Barclays. Barclays know how to charge but i haver never been let down by them no matter where i was in the world.

Ezzy
 
I know a lady who transfered a large sum (almost 6 figures) from Santander to another bank, it went missing for nine weeks (gulp), it ws eventually sorted but a lot of financial damage had been done to their company and it almost put them under, it turned out that it was sent to the wrong place originally and was moved all over, there was an awful lot of penalty charges and some very high upo people had very red faces.
They now bank elsewhere after they'd been offered a very good financial apology.
 
Ecoman, when you say your banking turned into utter chaos.... what do you mean? I have a business account with Alliance and Leicester who were also recently taken over by Santander and you have me worried now :scared:
 
Sounds about par for the course with Santander - I really do believe they're even worse than the rest of them (not that there's a lot to choose...).

Andrew
 
Not trying to defend the banks particularly but what large multinational companies are good at customer service. It the nature of all the customer protection that we have these days. Staff cannot make decisions unless boxes have been ticked.
 
They are all the same my bank messed my mortgage up twice and now when i phone to sort out the last remaining problem they pass the buck and say its not there fault it was before the change over.
Is there still a finacial ombudsman who deals with these banks to make them more customer aware.:banghead:
 
There certainly is. Staffed by people uninhibited by suitable qualifications or experience. So you should get a fair hearing.
 
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They say you cant survive without a bank account I can prove otherwise as I dont have one being stuffed by them for £500.000 20 years ago were I lost everything through their legal charges on property wised me up,
All my dealing are done the victorian way by cash or barterred in kind, I would not ****s on a bank if it was on fire.
I feel sorry for those that deal with them but hey ho I was one of you many years ago
 
The natwest were my nightmare, totally inept assistant manager , told him in the end if he worked for me he would be sacked, took over 3 months to sort out an account, ended up complaining direct to the branch manager, it still took weeks, its not the first time or branch it has happened at either, won’t go through the door of a natwest now
 
If any of you read the Telegraph "My Money" section on a Saturday then nothing will surprise you about Santander!

Without wanting to be seen in any way as defending bankers.......

I have held a number of accounts for 15+ years with First Direct, a subsidiary of HSBC. They were one of the originators of telephone banking. Doubtless others might have had problems with them, but I can't recall a single instance in all that time where their service has been anything other than excellent. They have helped me resolve problems many times when I've been travelling and working abroad, and their staff are exemplary.

And no, other than banking with them I have no connection whatsoever with HSBC.

willie_gunn
 
In the bank today

The woman in the bank was going hammer and tong for exactly the same reason they changed banks and the bank had done absolutely nothing with the direct debits she had a fist full of bounced direct debit charges they should have changed over

It was quite enetertaining until you realise it could be me at the same desk, the women behind the ramp got it point blank range and from what I heard the bank thoroughly deserved it, still are the biggest bank in the world !!!!!!!!!
 
Hi, I'm ecoman's wife. We were with the alliance and leicester for over 40 years and they were great, it was the almalgamation with Santander that started hassles, requests for stationary ignored, unhelpful people on the end of the phone etc, just so different from the A&L, (how was it that the A&L staff suddenly seemed to disappear to be replaced with such unhelpfulness ? ), we could not get the required banking done to our satisfaction hence the shift to Cooperative. They've been great, so helpful, and as it's a people owned bank a lot of good work is done for local charities. You can deposit money to them through the Post Office, so no hassles as the nearest A&L/Santander branch to us is right across on the other side of the country, and if working with them by telephone was impossible then - - - - .
Am horrified that Santander have taken over other banks too, 'makes one wonder what's going on.
 
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