Santander customer service

Just_landed

Talking about SANTANDER apart from being treated badly by B&B , ABBEY and having A/L my shares turned into them, today I recieved a letter asking me to buy their shares, this time to buy in March. This is the third time that they have sent a begging letter to me.:p

:snow_laug :xmassign:



:xmastree:

emc

I've used an A/L premier current account for many years, initially because of the good current account interest rate for the first year, the linked Online Saver with a good interest rate, and the free world wide travel insurance.

However their customer service has always been appalling, and the benefits of their account have virtually disappeared. Their travel insurance now covers only Europe rather than being world-wide, and the interest on both accounts are now about 2% gross.

An example of their poor customer service is when I rang them earlier this week using their geographical switchboard number instead of the 0844 number they want customers to use. The switchboard operator put me though to the current accounts number, but the line was dropped the first time, and again on a second call. The third time, I told the switchboard operator that the line has been dropped on the previous two calls, and she said she would connect my call to a different number. This time I got through to speak to someone to find out the current interest rates, but at the end of the call, that person quizzed me on why I did not use the 0844 number, trying to make me use that number in future, and so pay A/L for the privilege of calling them.

Considering the poor customer service and meagre benefits, it's surprising that A/L are second of the MSE best buy current accounts, and Abbey, another Santander subsidiary with very poor customer service, are third best buy.

baby_boomer

Sorry the OP was so poorly expressed . I'd have been the first to criticise anyone else who used one bad experience to generalise about a national institution.

This wasn't a rant about one Christmas experience. It was an observation about Abbey over the course of 2008, with a wider message for B&B and A&L customers who have joined the Santander fold.

housesitter

Was on the phone on hold to Abbey yesterday for a total of 90minutes. I gave up a few times and had a life to get on with. Luckily I used their call back service, but eventually got through to the Idian call centre who unsurprisingly didn't have a clue.

Down to the branch today at lunch time, no queue and easily sorted.
You have to wonder why they bother ith these call centres that just don't work.

I was closing my account with them anyway due to interest rates, but that's another nail in the coffin.

dunstonh

Abbey dont have the nickname "Shabby" for no reason. They are notorious for queues and errors.

That said, I went past an Abbey branch at 11pm and there were no queues outside then.

fullstop

Sorry to hi-jack the Abbey thread, but am interested in parking some cash in ING for a year for the nice bonus does anyone know if they have a UK or overseas call centre, refuse to call them customer service.

Doomcow

why not just do online banking?

much easier, no tellers to deal with trying to sell you cards either...

fullstop

Doomcow wrote: »

why not just do online banking?

much easier, no tellers to deal with trying to sell you cards either...

Am going to , but if things do go wrong don't want to be hanging on the phone to foreign call centres repeating myself all the time.

Inactive

Santander ( Spain ), the parent company are just as bad.

simon_templar_2

Euromoney, Best Bank in the world awarded to Santander and best UK Bank awarded to Abbey, what about that then!