Money "eaten up" by Halifax Bank - and no idea when it'll come back!!!

hwfan

Mikeyorks wrote: »

I've twice had newly opened Halifax accounts go AWOL ..... on both occasions it was my address which didn't precisely match their records. On at least one of those occasions - they presented the address and I'd merely confirmed it was correct. My OH similarly had a new account go missing - in this case it was the date of birth that didn't precisely match (it had somehow reverted to 1900 ..... and she's not quite yet ready to figure in Mr Obama's acceptance speech!)

The net result of any key data not matching, as above, is that the account is allocated a User Identity (with which they group all your accounts behind the scenes) different to your 'usual' one. So the new account won't attach to your Portfolio - as the User ID doesn't conform to the rest of your accounts - so it effectively disappears from your view. It's alive and well - a fully operating account .... it just gets stranded from your view as the ID isn't yours.

My problems were several years ago and I'd understood they had fixed the address fragmentation problem which caused my mismatches. So perhaps their staff are less alert in looking out for this as a cause of 'missing accounts' .... as it's (mainly) solved. But unfortunately .... and it's far from being unique to Halifax .... I'm finding the ability of call centre staff to resolve problems / understand their own products is diminishing at a rapid rate. Mediocrity is all many appear to aspire to.

Thanks for explaning your experience mate. What I actually find very funny is that it took them two weeks to confirm the account had been set up and to send me a letter telling me the address didn't match, which seems mighty odd considering the money was deducted way back on the 24th Oct. Its one thing if they had crappy systems which caused my account not to show up, it's another altogether that nobody had a idea what happened till a week-and-a-half into my query, and I had been given all sorts of crappy, half-assed excuses.

I'd be perfectly happy administering all my money without stepping foot into a bank or wasting time on the phone, but so far the closest bank to offer that's HSBC, with their online-enquiry system linked to my internet banking account. Serves me right for being greedy and trying to get a better rate I guess. They may be "expensive" but their reputation/systems and service is indeed a cut above the rest. Still trying to find something equivalent to their level of service/sophistication with better rates, but to no avail.

Kaupthing was pretty simple to use and paid nice rates, but thanks to Iceland not willing to cough up for Icesave the whole shebang collapsed there.