Alliance and Leicester

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I happily banked with A&L for over 10 years. They are not as bad as some people make out, but I think some people have different expectations than I do.

If you are willing to understand how things work - like the extra day's clearing time, like the way online banking works and what all the balances mean - then their service is not bad. I don't understand why everyone has issues with their call centre staff for example - maybe it's the attitude of those calling and the fact you are asking for things which they are not permitted to give.

For example, if you attitude is that you've been wrongly charged, whereas in fact it's your misunderstanding of when you have to fund your account prior to undertaking a payment transaction, I can see why they are resilient and you feel that they are bad.

The only reason I do not use A&L as my primary bank account now is that I have a Barclays/Woolwich offset mortgage; I still have my A&L account and use it for many transactions - and thereby get free travel insurance. I'm still happy with what they do for me, apart from the ludicrous and not clearly disclosed £250 FP limit.

I signed up with A&L last year but couldnt live with it, not only the low limit on faster payments and the way they take my cash for an extra day when I trasfer cash but also the fact that I can only transfer money to the same bank account only once per day. Its my cash isnt it why should they do this. Oh yes and a terrible phone service as well.

Try first direct they will give you £100 and if you arent happy another £100 and help you leave in my mind they are the best bank there is and if A&L was even half as good people would probably rave about them

The Alliance & Leicester call centre agents are either incredibly dumb or just totally ignore what the customer is telling them.

I rang A&L customer services recently and told the agent that having an A&L current account had been a bad experience, particularly because of the terrible branch customer service, and I asked him to close my online saver account that was linked to the current account, so that I could then switch my current account to a different bank and close the A&L current account .

The agent closed the saver account, informed me that the closure balance would be added to my current account, and then said "Oh while you're on the line, we have a new account X. Would you be interested blah blah blah ?"

I had to repeat to him that I was a dissatisfied customer who was closing Alliance & Leicester accounts, and explain to him politely that because of that I did not want to open any new accounts with A&L.

Do these A&L call centre agents just follow the autocue blindly without thinking about what the customer has told them???

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I happily banked with A&L for over 10 years. They are not as bad as some people make out, but I think some people have different expectations than I do.

If you are willing to understand how things work - like the extra day's clearing time, like the way online banking works and what all the balances mean - then their service is not bad. I don't understand why everyone has issues with their call centre staff for example - maybe it's the attitude of those calling and the fact you are asking for things which they are not permitted to give.

The thing is though, that's A&Ls problem. Extra day for clearing? No other bank has that, and it could conceivably cause problems for many people. The multitude of balances? No other bank has that - HSBC, RBS, Lloyds, Barclays, all the other banks have one or two balances which are instantly comprehensible, whereas A&L have about twelve.

I have heard so many horror stories of A&L that it isn't funny - from the person a few days back who had standing orders created from thin air and then paid three times (only for A&L to deny responsibility and ruin his credit rating), the outsourcing of card activation to a hard sell card protection plan merchant, reordering transactions and then charging fees based on their new order, showing someone's salary credit as available and then charging fees because apparently you have to wait 24 hours before using it, the rude call centre operators, even the branch refusing to break a £20 note (seriously, I wouldn't even bother checking if someone was a customer for that)... and so on and so on and so on. Two of my colleagues have banked with A&L, both are of the considered opinion that they are total f**kwits, an opinion which if you couldn't tell already I happen to share. The only person I've found who actually likes them is my mother, and even she's more apathetic than anything else (not raving about them in the sense some do about First Direct).

Your solution is to, instead of walking away from the person who's punching you in the face, get used to them punching you in the face. Comparing A&L to a Tesco Value (cheap and cheerful) product as someone did above is something of a misnomer - if A&L was a food product it'd look nice, taste like sh*t and then give you the most violent episode of diarrhoea the world has ever seen.

tl;dr - I'll keep my 0.1% interest rate with RBS in exchange for some bloody competence.

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

If you are willing to understand how things work - like the extra day's clearing time, like the way online banking works and what all the balances mean - then their service is not bad. I don't understand why everyone has issues with their call centre staff for example - maybe it's the attitude of those calling and the fact you are asking for things which they are not permitted to give.

You can only deal with the call centre staff, who never seem to have any record of the last time I called, therefore are impossible to hold to account for failing to put a freeze on the account when they said they would to give me time to get my ex to sign the joint to sole account form, or best of all when the "service" centre lost said joint to sole account form a staggering three times despite it being sent recorded delivery and definitely getting there, and then charged me in total over £600 because I had not put in the minimum payment each month as my ex would only take it out if I funded the account (which was supposed to be frozen anyway!). :mad::mad::mad: In the end I took a form into a branch and they said I had to post it they couldn't fax it as an online account, and it was only when I actually broke down crying at the sheer frustration that I couldn't send this form that it had taken me 5 months to get him to sign and they'd lost three times adding nearly another 3 months onto the process (or rather his mother got him to sign) that they relented and faxed a copy to the call centre for me.

I'd also love to know if other banks require both parties to sign a form to take one name off a joint account if it is in credit. My ex basically held me to ransom by not signing and emptying the account, taking it hugely overdrawn, A & L sent threatening letters about taking it to court if we didn't fund the account, which I said I would pay off the entire amount owing if they would take my name off the account, or his, but they wouldn't without his signiture, and any money I put it he took out again, and we'd have been right back at square one!

In addition requiring both parties to sign a form stating we had moved house is madness, I couldn't find my ex for two months and we both had moved out the old house, yet 'for security reasons' A&L kept sending all correspondance there and it had to be picked up by hand when the old landlord called me as Royal Mail didn't forward bank things for whatever reason.

Never, ever again.

ShelfStacker wrote: »

I have heard so many horror stories of A&L that it isn't funny - from the person a few days back who had standing orders created from thin air and then paid three times (only for A&L to deny responsibility and ruin his credit rating), the outsourcing of card activation to a hard sell card protection plan merchant, reordering transactions and then charging fees based on their new order, showing someone's salary credit as available and then charging fees because apparently you have to wait 24 hours before using it, the rude call centre operators, even the branch refusing to break a £20 note (seriously, I wouldn't even bother checking if someone was a customer for that)... and so on and so on and so on. Two of my colleagues have banked with A&L, both are of the considered opinion that they are total f**kwits, an opinion which if you couldn't tell already I happen to share. The only person I've found who actually likes them is my mother, and even she's more apathetic than anything else (not raving about them in the sense some do about First Direct).

Well I've personally had major grievances with two fo the big high street banks, whereas I've never had a problem with A&L. I'm not disagreeing that A&L has a rather awkward system, but anyone who reads the T&Cs of their account can make an informed decision whether or not they can live with some of the shortfalls in exchange for the cash payouts and other benefits that are offered. The problem seems to be the majority people don't do this and are therefore surprised when A&L follow through and enforce T&Cs they weren't aware of.

As far the major problems go, I don't think A&L has much more than its fair share. Just one example of another bank being totally incompetant at the moment is HSBC, who has contrived to deny one of its customers their legal right to be refunded for debt arising through fraud on their account, being rude and unhelpful along the way. All banks seem to treat a small number of customers incredibly unfairly. It's just a lottery.