I've had enough of Alliance & Leicester / Santander

Fr0dders

Fr0dders

Fr0dders

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,471
Location
West Yorks
Today santander / A&L have driven me to despair. I banked a cheque on Monday 23/08/10. Expecting it to be like any other time I've banked a cheque with them. I expected the cheque to take 5 working days and be available on the Friday. Today comes and the cheque isn't available. Quick call to santander later and they now say that since the merger with santander cheques now take 7 working days instead of 5 working days, and on top of that, because i banked my cheque at a A&L branch ATM (that isnt connected to the santander network yet) the cheque wasn't received in the Santander system till 2 working days after.

This makes a grand total of 9 working days, which combined with the bank holiday makes it 2 weeks they will have had my cheque. 2 WEEKS !!

And this isn't all, last week i was left standing around for half an hour trying to ring A&L when my card got declined at a petrol station. Reason i was on hold for over 30 minutes ? because their entire system had gone down and 3 other alliance and leicester customers all got declined as well. Trying to take cash out of an ATM revealed the message "we are unable to contact your bank" rather than the usual "you have insufficient funds" Needless to say i had to leave my ID and details to return and pay the amount when their systems were back up.

Then there's the actual migration to the santander system in the first place, which messed around with my direct debits and standing orders and took considerable time to put it back right and left me with no access to my online banking for over a week.

Then theres the crazy balance system, which means your available balance can fluctuate by the hour when nothing has been spent or received for no reason at all ! You never really know whats in your account

I thought i was all alone in these problems. Till i read this:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2566263

22 pages of people with similar problems since Santander got involved.

And then i found this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1303107/Santander-pits-service.html

yes its typical daily mail tripe. But at least i'm not alone.

Now to find another bank ....
 
they were fine before the merger.

Should have seen the writing on the walls really. The staff have no clue about the new system (guy put us on hold twice this morning trying to figure out what had happened) and the system is crap to boot.

Things might be better in a year, when they've figured all the bugs out, and got all their staff properly experienced on the new system. but at the moment its chaos.
 
I've moved from Santander to NatWest and I'm a lot happier with the service, back when Santander was still Abbey (or even Abbey National since I've had my account from 2001) I had no problems with it but recently it seems to have become a lot worse. I may have to renew the fun of trying to get a bank card from them soon.

MrLOL: good luck finding another bank, it may not mean much as an individual to do so but if enough people do it then they will eventually have to take notice.
 
I'm almost inclined to close my Alliance & Leicester account too - since the merge the service has just declined unfortunately.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
I have been with the Nat West for 16 years and never had a problem with them.

Santander I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
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Good luck - Natwest have been sold to Santander, should go through in 12-18 months. We're with Natwest too and will be leaving if the sale is approved.
 
yeah man like everyone else i say change banks

I've only ever banked with HSBC & had no problems, yeah their loans & credits cards are expensive but that's why you shop around :)
 
We've been with HSBC for 25 years and in that time they have been nothing but helpful, efficient and helped us through some pretty bad times in the past.

I would recommend them to anyone.
 
I've been with A&L for four years, not had any problems with them since the Santander merger, although clearly lots of poeple have.
 
Is there any bank which is actually nice? One that has good service, does everything it's suppose to well and isn't run by rich scumqueens?
 
Forde said:
Is there any bank which is actually nice? One that has good service, does everything it's suppose to well and isn't run by rich scumqueens?
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The co-operative bank is great service wise, for us anyway. The only downside is that you may not have local branches depending where you live. We are in manchester and there are branches in most towns here for paying stuff in like cash and cheques. The online banking is very reliable and easy to use.
 
Basher said:
First Direct is great, straight through to a person (no press 1 ...) very, very quickly.
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dazz25 said:
First Direct as well here! Never had any problems and always quick and efficient service.
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We're probably going with First direct, they're part of the HSBC group which has such good praise on here, and first direct always tops the customer satisfation surveys.

If natwest does get sold to santander, i'd run as fast as your little legs will carry you (wee wee wee all the way home :D )
 
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