Alliance and Leicester - recommend a friend? (Merged)

loopy_lou_6

I to am having the same problem, can anyone plse advise the best places to bombard them with e-mails/letters/phone calls? I sent an e-mail last week only to be told I had the wrong department. Shall I threaten with the obudsman. Also I dont get my salary paid in, its just money bouncing round with a standing order, but i dnt remember it saying anything about salaries, just a monthly funding of £1,000?

comdw

I'm in the same situation. I was referred and opened my account back in July. Neither of us have the £50 bonus and we've both rung them on several occasions and just get told to wait another couple of weeks.

What address is best to send letters to get this resolved? Also any e-mail addresses are useful.

TREVORCOLMAN

Anyone who has not had their refer money should go into a Branch and compalin when there are lots of people around. Ask for a complaints form and tell them you are going to write to the financial ombudsman!

Mine was sorted in 2 days when I did this!

Hope this helps.

comdw

I had a letter today from Alliance and Leicester saying that they never received the recommend a friend voucher - you'd think that they could have told us this when we first rang up 3 months ago!! Not sure whether to believe them, it was standard first class post.

They've told me to fill out the voucher again. This time I'll be writing an accompanying letter and sending it recorded post. I suppose there is nothing else I can do.

Fred_Bear_2

I have been a customer of A&L for 15 years. I recommended a friend (my mother) last July and her account was opened on 8th August. Despite many phone calls we are still waiting for our £50 each. On two occasions my mother was told that she was not entitled to her £50 because she had already received £25 for opening her account online! During one telephone conversation I was asked a long list of questions to find a reason to disqualify us – but they could find no reason. Now they are saying they haven’t received a voucher which they insist on. (Fortunately I kept a copy before I posted it). It seems to me that they are hoping I will eventually give up. No chance! The last time I ‘recommended a friend’ it was to Tiscali. After many months of broken promises I started to bombard Tiscali with a daily email and fax. After about one week they paid up although my friend never did receive his £10. I left Tiscali soon after of course.

davidwaugh

The 50 pound has been credited. Open account on the 2nd September. Better late than never! Be persistant

mrsw

comdw wrote:

I had a letter today from Alliance and Leicester saying that they never received the recommend a friend voucher - you'd think that they could have told us this when we first rang up 3 months ago!! Not sure whether to believe them, it was standard first class post.

They've told me to fill out the voucher again. This time I'll be writing an accompanying letter and sending it recorded post. I suppose there is nothing else I can do.

This also happened to someone that I recommended. All sounds a bit suspicious to me.

mrsw

TREVORCOLMAN wrote:

Anyone who has not had their refer money should go into a Branch and compalin when there are lots of people around. Ask for a complaints form and tell them you are going to write to the financial ombudsman!

Mine was sorted in 2 days when I did this!

Hope this helps.

I tried complaining in a branch, only to be told that because I had opened my account online, it was nothing to do with them! Great service A&L.

Pontoon

I resorted to complaining on the phone this morning. I switched my current account to A&L thinking it would be easy and stress free. I'm now waiting for more things to bite me in the a**

Initially they got the address wrong. missing out the c in 4c so all my neighbours got a random piece. The only one I know came to my door and apologised as she only realised after she'd opened the envelope that it wasnt addressed to her. But that the pin number bit was still intact.... I do trust her, but I've changed my pin anyway.
I phoned A&L and got the address problem sorted. Then never heard anything for another few weeks and nothing had been switched. So I phoned and the guy explained that I should have received a letter and filled out the standing orders and the Direct debits I wanted transferred. I hadn't received that so he took the information from me.
about a month later I noticed all the standing orders but only half the direct debits had switched, and my pay was still going into my old account ie no money in the new one.
I kept an eye on this and transferred enough money to cover the bills, then contacted the agency who pay me and asked if they had been informed of the change of account. (NB this is about 6 to 8 weeks after the initial acceptance) - No they'd heard nothing. So I gave them the details and they switched it for me.

Then while heading into the gym on Wednesday (3 months since the opening of the account) my membership card wouldn't let me in. There'd been a problem with my direct debit.... so i paid with my debit card then filled out a new direct debit form :mad:

I phoned A&L this morning to complain. Told my story and said I wasn't happy about how long it has taken (reply being "we have to wait on the other banks they tend to take a while to get back to us with the direct debit information" ) and that I don't understand how they managed to stop that direct debit. I also pointed out that my boyfriend would no longer be switching which was our original plan.
The girl then asked "So what do you want us to do?"
GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I want to log a complaint. I want to be treated better and I would like to know why they transferred my outgoings to an account with no funds in it and didn't bother transferring my pay. I want to know why they cancelled my gym membership?

"I can ask for an investigation as to why your direct debit wasn't paid and then send you a report in a couple of days."

I at this point gave up and said I suppose that will do Thank you.

What's the point in getting transferred to a complaints line when they don't know how to deal with one. That was all I was doing! Complaining!

DemiDee

This is terrible! So many people getting so much hassle! And that's just the people on this board! Multiply that by a good figure and we can only imagine what hassle A&L are putting people through. I had a two hour meeting to open an account with them recently. I have never been in debt and always pay bills immediately, have a mortgage and never had any money trouble. They still turned me down - simply because I wasn't on the electoral register! Now I have read all of your experiences I am pleased they turned me down. After all, I could not justify recommended any friend that I valued enough to a bank that is this bad!