my Abbey story of absolutely disgusting "customer service"

mickymellon

BEWARE ABBEY: last year whilst on holiday in S America, I called the abbey to simply ask for authorisation to withdraw £800 so I could go into a bank (Santander) and get the funds - easy right?

I get put through to their call center in India where upon asking the question I am told I have THREE options

1) go to a shop and ask for £800 in cash back (where often the shops there are not worth £800 and where you can not even do this in the UK!)

or

2) go to your home branch (which I explained was 7000+ miles away)

When I said that was only two and these were not feasible, the call center agent got very agitated and said those were my options, then proceeded to get abusive and say that he was going to freeze my account!!!
I asked to speak to his manager and he promptly hung up!
Calling back saw repeated waits of at least 30 minutes, on one occasion me getting through to the same guy and again abuse.

The next day I had NO access to my account meaning my girlfriend and I had to ask strangers for money for food and sleep rough!

I was wired money from my parents and decided to come home to sort this out (as also advised by the call center guy!) meaning travelling by bus for 3 days, buying return flights and leaving my girlfriend on her own; my bank manager said my account was exemplary and said there shouldn't be a problem and that he'd get me my ISA card issued (finally after nearly a year) and get this looked into and resolved for ever, there were also several letters from Abbey saying this is being looked into please contact again in a month then followed by the same letter with the date changed to the following month etc
- nothing arrived, he never answered any more calls or emails.
Having since approached the financial Ombudsman, the outcome was that Abbey sent a generic "sorry we did not meet your expectations, here's £100" nice considering they degraded us to begging, sleeping rough, me having to leave my girlfriend in a foreign country and fly (at my cost 14,000 miles!!!!)

so avoid! and if anyone has any information on if/how this can be made known to a wider audience, please let me know

TravellingAbuela

OMG and I thought I had problems, stuck 6 weeks without a bank card due to the bungling inefficiency of the bank. At least I am in the country.

chambta

Flying home from a distant continent seems a rather extreme measure! If you had the means to buy the ticket could you not have taken a cash advance/ATM withdrawal on the credit card that was used to buy it?

PBA

I'm not sure I get your point. Yes it's true that you can't rock up to any Santander branch in the world and assume you can get large amounts of cash out, sadly international banking rules prevent that. Your Abbey card can withdraw you £300 a day in local currency though, so it would have only taken a few days to get the money you wanted.

Voyager2002

PBA wrote: »

I'm not sure I get your point. Yes it's true that you can't rock up to any Santander branch in the world and assume you can get large amounts of cash out, sadly international banking rules prevent that. Your Abbey card can withdraw you £300 a day in local currency though, so it would have only taken a few days to get the money you wanted.

I think the point is that when he asked to be allowed to withdraw more money, his account was frozen!

I once had a similar experience: Abbey failed to transfer funds from a savings account to a current account, and as a result bounced the cheque with which I had paid a visa card bill. As a result, when I arrived in Germany penniless (after three months travelling) and the visa card was my only source of funds, I was stranded with nothing. I only got home because the Salvation Army branch in a main railway station lent me the money for an air ticket.

sireynard

Please can anyone help? I have had two cheques "bounced" even though the funds were in place on the day the cheques were presented. The cheques were posted to my building society to be credited to my savings accounts. This was on a Friday.So as not to lose interest I kept the money in my Halifax savings account for a further three days before transferring it (online)to my Halifax current account. Halifax say it is in the terms and conditions that monies have to be in the account on the day the cheques are written out. My argument is the money was transferred to the current account on the same working day as the cheques were presented so the funds were there.

mickymellon

I had no access to any money despite thousands in my account

my family were distraught and I had to come back as I had to look after myself and my girlfriend hence family wiring me money; we had several months left of the trip hence me having to fly back, get this resolved and not wanting to make bangles or find a dog and a bit of rope.

*I* know you can only withdraw £300/day in the UK but wanted to ask *if* they could authorise £800 or advise me on the best court of action.
The actual banks answer was to get £800 cashback from a local shop

...also I was never able to withdraw a full £300 ANYWHERE in South America.

Abbey are absolutely incompentent and reduced me to begging money from strangers, sleeping rough and putting my girlfriends safety at risk and at the end (of a very long day) offer me £100 which is like spitting in my face.

~Beanie~

sireynard wrote: »

Please can anyone help? I have had two cheques "bounced" even though the funds were in place on the day the cheques were presented. The cheques were posted to my building society to be credited to my savings accounts. This was on a Friday.So as not to lose interest I kept the money in my Halifax savings account for a further three days before transferring it (online)to my Halifax current account. Halifax say it is in the terms and conditions that monies have to be in the account on the day the cheques are written out. My argument is the money was transferred to the current account on the same working day as the cheques were presented so the funds were there.

Well firstly you should start a new thread and not hijack somone elses.

But to answer your question, it is in the terms and conditions of all Banks that monies have to be in the account the day the cheques are written out. You are actually comitting fraud if you write cheques knowing that there are not the funds in the account to cover them (even if there are funds elsewhere).

Transferring the cash from another account is not good enough, at the very least you should have done it the day before so that it was already there when the cheques were presented.

You tried to play the system and failed, accept it.

Voyager2002

mickymellon wrote: »

I had no access to any money despite thousands in my account

my family were distraught and I had to come back as I had to look after myself and my girlfriend hence family wiring me money; we had several months left of the trip hence me having to fly back, get this resolved and not wanting to make bangles or find a dog and a bit of rope.

*I* know you can only withdraw £300/day in the UK but wanted to ask *if* they could authorise £800 or advise me on the best court of action.
The actual banks answer was to get £800 cashback from a local shop

...also I was never able to withdraw a full £300 ANYWHERE in South America.

Abbey are absolutely incompentent and reduced me to begging money from strangers, sleeping rough and putting my girlfriends safety at risk and at the end (of a very long day) offer me £100 which is like spitting in my face.

In fairness to Abbey, they are not responsible for the policies and practices of the banks in South America. The daily limits that you encountered were set by the banks there, not by Abbey. And I don't see how a call-centre operative in India could know about banks in another continent.

Anyway, you were asking the person an unusual question; did not accept the answer that was in his script; and I suppose it was reasonable for him to find that suspicious. I would imagine that their standing instructions are to freeze any account that seem to be suspicious and refuse to talk to the person claiming to be the customer. In that situation I think I would have sought help from my local British Embassy (or consulate) before making a needless intercontinental journey.

Compensation: after my experience I eventually got 25 pounds out of them, and getting that took months and months of hard fighting. So if you have been offered a hundred pounds without effort you are doing well.

mickymellon

Voyager2002 wrote: »

In fairness to Abbey, they are not responsible for the policies and practices of the banks in South America. The daily limits that you encountered were set by the banks there, not by Abbey. And I don't see how a call-centre operative in India could know about banks in another continent.

Anyway, you were asking the person an unusual question; did not accept the answer that was in his script; and I suppose it was reasonable for him to find that suspicious. I would imagine that their standing instructions are to freeze any account that seem to be suspicious and refuse to talk to the person claiming to be the customer. In that situation I think I would have sought help from my local British Embassy (or consulate) before making a needless intercontinental journey.

Compensation: after my experience I eventually got 25 pounds out of them, and getting that took months and months of hard fighting. So if you have been offered a hundred pounds without effort you are doing well.

so them getting abusive and not letting me speak to a line manager was fine
or me speaking to the branch manager as soon as I got back who promised he'd get this resolved pemanantly, arrange an apology, compensation and a card for my ISA
of which have failed to materialise is fine too?

It wasn't that my request was suspicious, I passed all security measures asked it was when the operative got abusive that he said he would freeze my account so I don't think I have done well!

Voyager2002

mickymellon wrote: »

so them getting abusive and not letting me speak to a line manager was fine
or me speaking to the branch manager as soon as I got back who promised he'd get this resolved pemanantly, arrange an apology, compensation and a card for my ISA
of which have failed to materialise is fine too?

It wasn't that my request was suspicious, I passed all security measures asked it was when the operative got abusive that he said he would freeze my account so I don't think I have done well!

No, of course it was not "fine". I suppose that my expectations are very low.

I just want you to appreciate that you asked someone a question that he could not possibly answer, and were trying to get at more money than their standard procedures allow. He tried to be helpful, although his answer was stupid and impractical. You persisted, so I am not surprised that at that point he became suspicious.

Obviously they ought to have ways of dealing with kind of situation without it becoming a disaster for the customer; there ought to be ways for you to speak to a manager by telephone; and promises made by branch staff should be kept. In much the same way, politicians should tell the truth. However, we all need to acquire skills in surviving in the real world, where what happens in practice is very different from what ought to happen.