Abbey business accounts

shockingmoment

Except to say today I received a £25 'ex gratia' payment.

Not worth the hassle I've had but better than nothing. No apology though.

oscarhugo

At least 2 US$ remittances have been sent back to the senders by Abbey in recent weeks. Also, I still do not have the wherewithal to be able to do Ebanking again since the so-called 'upgrade'. Fortunately, a few months ago we opened a BoS 'Total business account', purely for the rate of interest, to use as a Deposit a/c. I have been able to get the US people to remit again to this a/c, successfully. I think we're going to switch our 'Main' Biz banking to BoS. Will keep the Abbey accounts open, for now anyway, but in the long run I think Abbey has f*cked it up & they're going to pay the price.

Pugazerila

On the 30th Dec I couldn't log into my online business account. I had previously migrated to their new login system and had successfully logged on several times. Gave them a call and the guy said he would give me a new Personal ID. I waited on the line a bit and then he said "OK that will be with you in the next 3 to 4 days". Hang on! I thought he meant that he was going to advise it to me on the phone. He said he was sorry he had not explained that but it was too late to unwind and I'd have to wait for it to arrive. Accordingly, I was very pleased to receive their letter the VERY next day......but then I opened it .....to read "Thanks for letting us know that you'd like to manage your money online" (Well, yes I would!) "When you use Abbey's online service for the first time" (but I'm not a NEW customer?) "you'll need three things to hand: (What?) Your Personal ID, which is xxxxxxx. Your 8 digit Passcode, which you'll get in the next few days" (What, What?) and "Your 5 digit Registration Number, which will arrive soon after" (What, What, What the hell!!!!). I immediately phoned them again only to be told that my Personal ID could have been given over the phone and that their guy the previous day had made a mistake by actioning this unnecessary procedure but not to worry as I should receive the two remaining letters within the next few day. It's now 9 days and 3 phonecalls later and I have still not received them. Now they're saying that it takes 7-10 days (so tomorrow's looking promising!) and "please would you accept our apologies" and "but, but, but, Sir please don't be rude"! When this is resolved I intend, like shockingmoment, to send them my official bill for £35 not that it goes anywhere towards compensating for all the hassle.

Smallbusiness_3

Ho Ho it continues. I foudn purely by chance that they changed my correspondence address on my account to a completely unrelated one with no connection to my company. I have written suggesting serious irregularities and a security breach. Will wait to see what happend.

Barrybloke

Having an Abbey Business account means that you can't pay in cheques at a branch counter, but must use the bank machine outside, or post them to head office. At face value this is fine for free banking, but I have just experienced total inflexibility from Abbey.

Today the bank machine at my local branch was broken when I went to pay in a cheque. I was told that they could not accept it at the counter as they cannot access my business account. The options I was given was to post it, go to another branch 10 miles away, or try again tomorrow.

As the branch staff will normally empty the machine of cheques at the end of the day anyway, then some common sense and system flexibility can easily remove this annoyance. If anyone else has encountered this, then please complain to Abbey; multiple inputs might make a difference.

simon_templar_2

Counter access looks like coming very soon. The servicing and customer portals are starting to give access which they did not previously. I would expect in the near future that the counter can accept payments into business accounts.

nemobrown

Nothing but trouble with abbey business since I opened the account 4 months ago. Latest problem is this... Posted cheque to their processing plant in Scotland on the 19th Feb. This showed up on my account as uncleared on the 23rd. Today (26th Feb) no record of it having been paid in until the 25th. Problem with this is that I phoned my customer who gave me the cheque and the funds left his account on the 24th, that is , the day before I apparently paid it in. Is this legal? Seems to me like the funds are going to sit in Abbey's holding account for a few days pretending to clear and making them money, when by rights it should be in mine. Any help much appreciated.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

An update on this. I finally managed to access my account late Monday morning so at least they kept THAT promise. I had to do an extra log-in though. So now I have altered my first layer of log-in to be the same as my user ID. I don't want too many different things to remember.
This morning however, I see that although the correct balance is showing under "balances", the figures showing on the statement are wrong. It looks like once the new style was implemented, the reset balances to zero. As some DDs went out yesterday, it actually shows a MINUS balance before I made a deposit. So according to the statement screen, I have about £700 less in there that I actually do. It looks like it's only a cosmetic problem though as transactions have been allowed to happen even though I have no overdraft facility.
On the PLUS side, I see that they have finally implemented something that I've been nagging them about for the last two years. They are now showing payment references in real time for incoming BACS payments. For customers who pay this way, I give a unique reference number based on house name/number and postcode so that I know who has paid. Until now, this reference number has only been visible to me after the 1st of the following month. As I give a frequent repeat service, I occasionally didn't know if someone still owed me or not on a subsequent clean. I could usually tell by the name and the amount but some surnames are duplicated (e.g. Smith, Jones) and if the amount charged was the same, it could be a problem. This has held me back a bit from pushing BACS payments. Now I can market that I accept BACS payments from all customers who wish to pay this way - saving them postage costs for a cheque. This is a great help as some people just don't have cheque books and I don't do doorstep collecting.
I would like to think that my regular nagging helped a bit to get this facility enabled but they have probably been getting earache from a lot of people over this issue.

Firsty, sorry for resurrecting an old thread ANd for quoting my own post. Bear with me and you will see why.
As stated in my quoted post, once the "upgrade" was completed, Abbey started revealing the reference numbers for incoming BACS payments in real time. This was a major help for me as I supply a frequent service and need to know who has paid and when.
So I printed out a load of letters offering BACS payment facilities for my customers and stapled them to my window cleaning bills. After distributing these to about 20% of my customers, the BACS reference numbers disappeared from new transactions as suddenly and unexpectedly as they appeared in the first place. This was pretty bad news for me. It would have been better if they hadn't started supplying the reference numbers in real timer in the first place. At least I knew what to expect when I couldn't access them. However, to supply them, allow me to start gearing up for the new way of doing things, then suddenly remove it is pretty damned awful.
Even worse, they have removed the ability to view these BACS numbers (after the end of the accounting month) from their website.
Even then I though that at least I would be able to see the reference numbers when the paper statwement arrived. Not a chance. They have stoppped printing the reference numbers on the paperwork too.
So now I am in a situation where, theoretically, I don't know which customers have paid me by BACS. In practise, it's not quite so bad because I do get to see the name of the payer and the amount paid. Therefore, I can usually track it on my database. Problems arise where surnames and amounts owing are identical though. I have a few Smiths and Jones on my books - some of whom are charged identical amounts. There would be no way of differentiating between them if they all paid by BACS.

So, as a member of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) who is entitled to free banking with the Co-op due to that membership, I'M OFF. The Co-op DO show the BACS reference numbers in real time on the web.
I've done my personal banking with the Abbey for 30 years. I've done my business banking with them for about 6. I had my mortgage with them for a few years too. I also have insurance policies with them which I will switch elsewhere. Although this company may be well capitalised, they clearly are incapable of meeting their customers needs.
I may keep the Abbey business account for cash and cheque clearing as the clearance times are faster than with the Co-op (I would need to use the post office as an agent) and it's easier to physically make the deposits. If I just keep a cushion of about £50 in there and BACS everything else to my Co-op account, I will then run everything from Co-op. Obviously I will need to furnish my BACS paying customers with new details.

Also, I want to say that I want this post to remain on this board.
The only reason I'm not saying what I REALLY think of the Abbey is because I don't want this post removed.
Suffice to say I was furious when that paper statement arrived without the BACS references.
I will now be voting with my feet.
Abbey won't be bothered though. They make no money from me. Ironically, if they had made those BACS references available in real time, I would have been prepared to pay a smallish fixed fee for that.

purplelavender

Since the upgrade we have not been able to view online statements. We have rung them so many times, written, raised a complaint, contacted the Financial Ombudsman .... Still cannot view statements. It is now year end and a v trying time for us. We have to either wait for montly statements in the post or go to ATM for print out of last 10 transactions. Oh and we have had problems with ATMs out of order too. A problem when we are carrying couple of thousand shop takings to pay in. Now given up and moving to A&L so can pop over road to PO to pay in.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

purplelavender wrote: »

Since the upgrade we have not been able to view online statements. We have rung them so many times, written, raised a complaint, contacted the Financial Ombudsman .... Still cannot view statements. It is now year end and a v trying time for us. We have to either wait for montly statements in the post or go to ATM for print out of last 10 transactions. Oh and we have had problems with ATMs out of order too. A problem when we are carrying couple of thousand shop takings to pay in. Now given up and moving to A&L so can pop over road to PO to pay in.

I've heard quite a few stories like ours in the past few months - and that's in a fairly small circle really. I imagine that many Abbey business customers have quite simply had enough of their diabolical customer disservice and are going elsewhere. I suspect that this is want they want. They are probably unable or unwilling to admit that they bit off more they should have with the "free forever" banking model. Santander were obliged to continue it when they took over from Abbey but I believe they have intentionally ruined it in order to shed some of their customers.

Sorry to hear of your inability to see the statements online. That is truly appalling. I hope that you get adequately compensated for this - though I'm not sure that any compensation is adequate. I'm sure that we would all just prefer it to work the way it's supposed to work.