Abbey: just how long can they get away with it? Please share your experiences here.

Helenw1965_2

For the sake of clarity, my employer paying in wages late was because of a problem with their bank, which they are trying to resolve.

Also, whether or not the issue is about the 'the person being at fault' or their own financial illiteracy, anyone who is a customer deserves at the least to be treated with courtesy, and if a persons job is answering calls and they are supposed to be assisting or sign posting people then they shouldn't be rude, obnoxious, raise their voice or spend the call tutting and huffing and puffing and shouting what do you want before the call is mysteriously ended. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.


Finally, as I said, I went into the branch and they were great. That doesn't mean it's ok to give people a number that connects them with people who can't deal with queries or who give out inaccurate information. We're talking about basic customer care, or is it that people who make mistakes aren't entitled to that.

daveyjp

Had a Abbey accounts of various sorts for 40 years. Now in the position where most of our accounts are with them.

Tried Midland - remember them, Yorkshire Bank, TSB and had problems with all of them, eventually going to Abbey for current account.

National and Provincial (remember them?) messed up on our first mortgage and we nearly lost out buying a house.

Britannia lied when they missold me a 'fully flexible mortgage' - it was nothing of the sort. Good job I had all details of what I wanted written down and they had a copy of it in the file. Ended up moving it to Abbey.

Fraudulent transacions have been a pain to sort out, but they were, just as promised. Incorrect dd payment the other month was sorted after a quick visit to the branch.

I have a number direct to my branch, I can call into a local branch and discuss anything anytime.

So I don't think they are worse than anyone else.

Websites like this breed complaints as someone googles "abbey problems" and this site comes up. Google 'Renault problems' and it will lead you to one site with thousands of threads with people complaining - I'm surprised they sell any.

emma396

Had accounts with Abbey for a long time, I think my parents opened an account there for me when I was very young, until very recently I had experienced no problems at all with them. Even had the 8% for a year, but that ended so I closed the account and attempted to open a new year as advised by them to do so. Anyway, with the new account I had to ask and ask and ask for it to be linked with my graduate account to enable internet banking, but it never happened, so I went in and closed all of my account with them and no longer bank with them.

princesspugh

We have an Abbey account which we are closing down on Tuesday (thankfully) - they have been a nightmare since their computers changed over or whatever their excuse was.

It took us a year to change our address with them because the forms were never processed. The 2nd to last time we went into the branch I gave them yet another form to change it, we went back 2 weeks later and the same cashier admitted it was still on her desk to be processed, proudly wafting it under our nose - um, that would be efficiency and excellent customer service right there!

SRM_2

Abbey were a nightmare when things changed over - everything went wrong, systems failed, things didn't work... But guess what? I've stuck with it - and they're great. The online banking is second to none and there the ones that have shown to be the strongest bank in this economic climate. It's up and up for Abbey where as other banks are falling - and falling fast! You might have a gripe with Abbey, but believe you me, they ain't going anywhere.... Santader are here to stay - and I think it's GREAT!

sutton111

Do you work for Abbey?

Extant

daveyjp wrote: »

Websites like this breed complaints as someone googles "abbey problems" and this site comes up. Google 'Renault problems' and it will lead you to one site with thousands of threads with people complaining - I'm surprised they sell any.

Of course - the customer who has had something go wrong is nearly always the minority, but they are the vocal minority. How many times do you ever hear someone say "yeah, their service was awesome"? Next to never, because people take good service for granted, but stomp their feet and whinge the loudest when things go wrong.

It happens with everything - if you relied on this board, you would keep your money under your bed and wonder how any bank had any customers. If you relied on the internet, you'd think that every iPod ever made had a problem.

Good luck getting them to admit that, though.

wheelel

BarclaysManager wrote: »

Of course - the customer who has had something go wrong is nearly always the minority, but they are the vocal minority. How many times do you ever hear someone say "yeah, their service was awesome"? Next to never, because people take good service for granted, but stomp their feet and whinge the loudest when things go wrong.

Very true, but this is entirely the point of my original post. I'm trying to point out the fact that there seems to be so much bad press around relating to Abbey and their persistent failures. Any bank will have customers who are unhappy because with the best will in the world mistakes happen all the time and it would b unreasonable not to accept this, but I could never get over the sheer volume of unhappy customers that seem to have been let down by Abbey. It just seems like mistake, after mistake after mistake. As you can see from the poll I created an incredible majority have said that they're not happy with the way they've been treated - surely one would expect that the unhappy customers would be in the minority?

All I'm saying is that Abbey have definitely gone wrong somewhere....

wheelel

princesspugh wrote: »

It took us a year to change our address with them because the forms were never processed. The 2nd to last time we went into the branch I gave them yet another form to change it, we went back 2 weeks later and the same cashier admitted it was still on her desk to be processed, proudly wafting it under our nose - um, that would be efficiency and excellent customer service right there!

Sounds about right!! Exactly the reason I had to wait 5 months for a replacement debit card.... no matter how many times I told them my address they couldn't seem to process it, and sent my card to a branch 200 miles away 8 times!!! There's surely just no excuse for that level of incompetence!!

wheelel

Guess what I just found out today....Just to let you all know if you didn't already, it doesn't really matter how cr*p Abbey are because as of 2011, they'll be officially rebranded as Santander, as will Alliance + Leicester and Bradford and Bingley, so Abbey will officially cease to exist. Good riddance as they say!!!