Disgusting Alliance & Leicester

Sp3no

I have had the year from hell, all because of Alliance & Leicester, i opened a new bank account with them in march last year, within a month they ruined my life, here is a copy of my initial complains letter, its a long story with many more chapters, at the moment they have passed my debt to debt recovery, read on and you will be amazed.
This case went to the Obudsman who's decision has gone with A&L!!!
Read on if you can be bothered all will be revealed

Dear Sir/Madame
I am writing to you to express my utter disappointment and disgust at how Alliance & Leicester have treated me as a new customer. Due to an error made by Alliance & Leicester I have had my entire months wages taken away from me, had the money refunded, and taken away from me again. As I write this I am over £300 over my overdraft and this is due to no fault of my own, you are charging me for the privilege, I have no money to get to work, feed me and my family, pay my bills or spend any money on my self. Your reply to this situation has been totally heartless, cruel, rude, inhuman and it has been evident that you don’t care about me and the situation you have put me in. I have been lied to on countless occasions and the stress you have caused me and my family is highly unnecessary.
Regretfully I recently decided to switch my bank account to Alliance & Leicester, I chose you apparently painless switching service to help me transfer all my current standing orders and direct debits from my previous account with HSBC. A cople of weeks passed and my wages were paid in to my new Alliance & Leicester current account, I expected all my bills to be paid as I used your switching service. They were not paid. I phoned customer services to find out what had happened, straight away I was blown away with the pathetic excuse for a telephone system, every operative I spoke to seemed to have little knowledge of the system and very little authority. If the answer was not written on a computer in front of them then instead of investigating the situation the correct protocol to them is to repeat over and over their previous statement, even if this is totally out of context. What I was told repeatedly was that due to the fact that I had not agreed to have an overdraft on my account, I would have to wait a minimum of 6 weeks for the standing orders and direct debits to be switched. I informed the operative at the switching service that I had to set up the standing order for my rent payment myself and then manually paid the rest of my bills over the phone. I asked if Alliance & Leicester were going to refund me the charges that I had incured for late payments but I was told it was no fault of Alliance & Leicester. I was promised that the following month that all my bills would be paid as I had previously instructed and left the conversation there.
I received a letter from Alliance and Leicester stating all the direct debits and standing orders that were now set up on my account, it stated that if I agreed with the standing orders and direct debits on my account then no more action was needed. All payments set out in this letter were as intended originally so I took no action as instructed.
On the 26th of May £1299 was debited from my account. This amounted to most of my wages, and took my account overdrawn. My first fear was that fraudulent activity had meant that money had been removed from my account. I straightaway got myself a mini statement from a cash machine that confirmed that £1299 was missing from my account. I went straight to the Haymarket Alliance & Leicester branch to investigate this further.
My account details were brought up on the computer by one of the staff members in the branch and it showed that my rental payment of £433 had left my account three times. I was shown my standing orders and direct debits on the screen by the clerk and instead of the one payment leaving my account, three separate payments had been made instead to the same account and sort code. These were listed on you system as two payments to SKY computing and one payment to AHS rent. Previously I had always made my payments to SKY computing so had no idea why there was reference to AHS rent or indeed two identical payments to SKY computer consultants Ltd?
I said to the clerk that obviously Alliance & Leicester had made a mistake and that the money needed to be credited back into my account. Apparently I would have to speak to customer services myself and raise the issue with them. I walked out the branch believing that after a quick call to customer services this problem would be resolved. I’m shocked that the power to deal with these situations has been removed form the branch staff and all decisions are made by operatives on a customer services number!!
I made the call to the customer services number and after being on hold for a ridiculous amount of time I managed to discover that I needed to speak to someone in the switching service. I was told by the person in the switching services that this was not a bank error and unfortunately there was nothing she could do and Alliance &Leicester would not be responsible for any charges I incurred because of this. I was treated with no compassion and was spoken to very rudely, after being told for the tenth time that Alliance & Leicester are not at fault I had no choice but to end the call as your employee had already threatened to end the call for me. During the call I had enquired to how three standing orders had been set up on my account, no explanation was given, it was just made clear to me that Alliance & Leicester were not at fault and the fact that I had been left with zero funds in my account to live on was of no concern. I had previously spoke to the switching service informing them that I had myself set up the rental payment so I was very confused to as why the switching service had felt the need to set up a further two payments!!!
After this phone call I was still with no money, or explanation or resolve to the situation. By now I was becoming extremely anxious as it was starting to dawn on me that a simple case of returning my money could become very difficult.
I had no choice but to make the phone call again, this time I spoke to a different employee who apologised and who now agreed with me that a mistake had been made by Alliance & Leicester, and any one with any common sense could have seen that.
I was instructed that it would take 10days to recover the monies from my landlord so the fastest way for me to get my money would be to talk to my landlord and get him to refund the money to me directly. I agreed that this would be a quicker route to clearing the funds back into my account. I tried contacting my Landlord and left messages for him, but these fell on deaf ears. I made it clear to him how desperate the situation had become for me but still he refused to act. Eventually I managed to speak to him and he told me that he would not be paying me the money back and I was to claim it back through my bank.
Immediately I rang the customer services line again and after many minutes on the phone I got to speak to someone who read through the notes on my account. I informed them of the situation and that my landlord will not be refunding my money and that I would wish the bank to pursue my landlord on my behalf to claim my money back. Obviously by now I had spent a few days without a penny to my name and the payment of my bills would have to be made. I asked if the £866 overpayment could be put back into my account as it was Alliance & Leicester’s mistake and I did not see why I should suffer when this whole situation had been caused by a banking error. I was told that money could not be paid into my account for a minimum of 10days. This was unacceptable and I had to stress to the customer services employee how desperate the situation was. I was told that they would have a word with their manager and call me back within the hour. I was never phoned back, I had to go through the telephone system again and eventually got to speak to someone. After they read through the notes on my account I was put through to a manager who managed to get authority to pay the funds into my account within 2 days. I was offered a £450 overdraft to cover my bill payments and even though I did not want an overdraft at all I had no choice but to accept this. Two day passed and no monies were paid into my account. After my bill payments went out my account I was left with just £30 available from the overdraft.
Once again I had to ring through the customer services system and was told there was no notes on my account to indicate that any money was being paid back, as you can imagine by now my blood was boiling and this was made worse by the fact that your employee seemed to think that being rude to me would be acceptable. When I expressed my desperate concern at having no money for food etc I was told that I had £30 for food and that I was not broke!! I had to end the conversation once again no closer to the return of my money.
By now I was totally fed up of speaking to faceless heartless people on a telephone so I had to take even more time out from my work schedule to visit the branch and speak to a human being.
I returned to the Alliance & Leicester branch and was dealt with by Shanti Odedra an in branch customer services advisor. Straight away Shanti could not believe how I had been treated and how clean cut the situation was. It was clear to her that Alliance & Leicester were totally at fault for the overpayment. Shanti herself rang through your telephone system and managed to confirm that payment would be made into my account on the 4th of June 2008 2 days later. On the 4th of June I checked my account to find that you had returned £1299 into my account, which was £433 too much. But I chose to pay my landlord myself at a later date the £433 you had taken back as I no longer trusted Alliance & Leicester to do so.
At this point I believed that the whole situation had finally been resolved.
I was so unhappy with the treatment that I had received; I had no choice but to make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This complaint has been made on my behalf and they have sent you details of my complaint, the reference for this complaint is Ref.7872195, the complaint was made to Mrs Griffin at the Alliance & Leicester head office. I am awaiting a response from Alliance & Leicester on their justification of their actions and a response to how they wish to compensate me for out of pocket expenses, charges and the stress caused to me and my family.



Unfortunately the situation was not to be resolved after all. Towards the end of June I received a letter from Alliance & Leicester employee EM Matthews, the letter was dated the 17th June 2008. I have enclosed a copy for your information. It stated that EM Matthews wrote to me on the 4th of June to advise that they intended to debit my account with £1299 but due to there being insufficient funds the debit was not made. I found this very strange as in fact a debit for £1299 had been made on the 26th of May 2008. What confused me further was that a credit of £1299 was made into my account as a refund by Alliance & Leicester on the 4th of June. There was never a debit made on the 4th of June and no previous letter sent as stated in this letter!!!
Also the letter said that a single debit of £1299 was being taken, instead of 3 amounts of £433?? There was never a single debit?
Totally confused by this, I took time out yet again from work to take this letter into the Haymarket Alliance & Leicester branch. I showed it to one of your staff members and was directed straight to a telephone. Are these people just a face to speak to because they certainly have no authority to deal with any situation and direct customers straight to the telephone?
I spoke to another customer services employee who’s name was Debbie, who assured me that there would be no debit of £1299 made on the 1st of July, she promised that the letter should be ignored and it was written in error. I took this opportunity to cancel all direct debits to my previous landlord for the sum of £433 as I had at this time moved into a new property and the last payment that was made to Sky computing that should have been for £433 was my last payment. Feeling confident and happy with this response I took no more action, I kept the letter for my records and left it at that.
On the 1st of July I had finally managed to set up my Internet banking after being sent incorrect pin numbers over the last month. In the morning of the 1st of July I checked my balance online, I was pleased to see that no further payments of £433 had been made and my account was as expected. It was not until the evening when I was in Sainsbury’s doing my weekly shopping that I realised something was wrong. I suffered great embarrassment at the check out when my card was declined. I returned home and had no choice but to ring customer services to find out why my card had been decline. What I was told was that a debit of £1299 had been taken again from my account. I had to go through all the events of the previous month with the customer services advisor, as amazingly there were now no notes on my account? This advisor showed no compassion for the situation I was in yet again and now I was being told that the “refund” had been taken back. I failed to understand how a refund could be taken off me when all along banking error was to blame. The £1299 after all was and is my money. All the customer services advisor could do was repeat what notes were now written on my account. She told me that the refund was temporary, up until now I had been given no indication or written evidence that this refund was ever going to be a temporary one. As I was clearly getting nowhere with this person I asked to speak to her manager. The manager was very rude and arrogant to me, as you can imagine I had completely reached my limit with this whole situation. I was now suffering from great stress, anxiety and panic attacks, I was again without a penny to my name, £300 over the overdraft I never wanted and still have every one of my bills to pay. As I was being spoken to in such a manner I regretfully lost my temper with this advisor and ended the call. I regret my actions towards to this employee, as I am fully aware it is not this individual’s fault and only Alliance and Leicester are to blame. Please extend my apologies to that employee.
I no longer had the patience to speak to customer services anymore. The following day on Wednesday 2nd July I took additional time out from work to speak to a branch manager. I decided to visit the branch on Horefair Street. I managed to get an immediate appointment with the female branch manager Raj. I had to once again go through the whole explaining process and this time I was pleased for the sympathetic response that I received. Raj phoned Alliance and Leicester head office and was instructed to get me to phone customer services. Raj rang the customer services number and sat in on the phone call. I was told there was nothing what so ever that could be done. Alliance and Leicester had at this point made no effort what so ever to recover the monies from my previous landlord due to date protection laws? I was told that Alliance and Leicester were now at no fault what so ever and if I can get the landlords details they would start the recovery process that could take weeks. I enquired about the fact that I was promised that no debit for £1299 would be made on the 1st of July only to be told that this was a lie and I should never have been instructed to ignore the letter. I questioned as to why the letter stated that I had been previously been written to on the 4th to inform me that a debit would be made when in fact on the 4th a credit was made. The advisor instructed me the date written on the letter was incorrect as in fact it should have stated that I had been written to previously on the 17th of June not the 4th of June. So yet another mistake had been made. What was really interesting was how could I have received a letter informing me that I had been written to on the 17th when in fact the letter stating this was also written on the 17th?????
The advisor was now talking over me everytime I questioned as to why all these mistakes had been made, she was incredibly rude to me saying, I am not the one who is over £300 over my overdraft, I am not the one with no money, you ring me for advice so I suggest you listen to it. She said to me that I must be on bad terms with my landlord for him to not return my money, I have in writing from my landlord how pleased he was with my tenancy and how it has been a pleasure to have me living in him property. So what right does she have to say things like that? The last comment she made was for me to ring her with my previous landlords address and details and then she hung up on me. All this took place with the branch manager sat in on the call. The manager herself was disgusted at how I was spoken to and has complained on my behalf.
Raj advised me to again contact my Landlord, as Alliance and Leicester were being so uncooperative about everything. I did this only to be told by my landlord that he now wants to deduct compensation from my money for the stress that this has caused him? Which I declined.
The following day Raj herself contacted my landlord only to be told that he now wanted compensation from Alliance and Leicester before releasing any money. Of course Raj had no authority to do this.
So as it stands I am still over my overdraft with no funds available to myself. How Alliance and Leicester can take a persons entire wages from them and leave them with no money is beyond me. Especially when there is no reason for this and all along it’s been my money. To further increase all the stress caused by this I am now receiving letters stating the charges that I am going to receive due to me being over my overdraft.
I am totally and utterly in shock at the attitude of Alliance and Leicester, I have now spoken to a solicitor who advised that Alliance and Leicester are at fault, you have already admitted liability over the phone and by the actions of crediting my account with a refund. There are also clauses in the banking code that apply to standing orders that need to be adhered to; so far you have not done this.
The conclusion to this is I want Alliance and Leicester to refund me the entire £866 that was originally overpaid and any interest that would have accumulated on this amount. I want all charges to be revoked, I want all my third party bill charges to be paid back to me and I want compensation for time I have had to take from work and the distress that this has caused me and my family. And lastly I want you to address any effect that this might have had on my credit history

A very disappointed and disgusted







Kris Spencer


c.c. The Financial Ombudsman Service
c.c. Banking Code Standards Board
c.c. BBC Watchdog
c.c. Leicester Mercury

Sp3no

The ombusdman replied saying A&L were not at fault as they tell him the original standing order list was incorrect and i should have seen this, the original list was correct and convineintly they no longer could produce this list. So i replied to the ombudsman thus

Dear Sir/Madame

Re:- Complaints Reference 7872195/JM/D103

Following on from you letter received 24th December 2008, and my telephone message left on Jan 2nd 2009, I am writing to you to inform you that I disagree fully with your findings and your conclusion to this matter.
It is fairly obvious that Alliance and Leicester are basing their argument on a piece of documentation that they conveniently no longer have. This documentation listed the standing orders that they planned to set up against my account. Surely by not being able to produce this letter they are in breech of their legal obligations by no longer holding this documentation on record?
I cannot see how you can agree with A&L when the whole case rests on something that is conveniently unavailable.
I have read through your findings and quite frankly I think it is disgusting how A&L have lied so blatantly which in turn infuriates me further. A&L keep records of their phone calls so I would request that you listen to these as you will clearly hear that the direct debit I set up over the phone was for SKY Computing, and not AHS Rent. I don’t even know who AHS rent is and there will be numerous phone calls on record where I ask that very question.
I do not see how A&L can claim that I set up a standing order with a reference that I have no clue about. I have enclosed my previous Tenancy Agreement that indicates the sort code and account number of my landlord along with the Reference which is SKY Computing. My question is why would I set up this standing order myself under a completely different reference?
I did indeed receive the list of Standing orders and direct debits against my account and it clearly stated that any discrepancies should be bough to light within 14days, if no discrepancies were found no further action needed to be taken. The list I received was correct so it is vitally important that A&L produce this piece of documentation. If in the mean time I find this letter I will send it through to further back up this lunacy.
It was stated in your conclusion that 1 payment was set up for Sky Computing and 2 further payments were set up for AHS Rent. I have never heard of AHS rent so the question is who set this up?
The real facts turn A&L argument on its head as the reality of the situation was that 2 payments for Sky Computing were made and only one to AHS Rent, not 2 to AHS rent as you stated. I would happily produce as evidence my bank statement which shows the 2 SKY Computing payments and 1 AHS rent payment leaving my account but conveniently once again A&L will no longer allow me to view or have access to my past statements.
Originally the standing order was correct on the letter I received from A&L, and then after A&L failed to make my first rent payment I rang their switching service and proceeded to make a manual payment over the phone to SKY Computing and make sure the standing order was set up for the following month. The following month A&L decided to pay SKY computing twice and make a payment to AHS Rent. The origin of AHS rent can only be from A&L, and setting up a duplicate payment to SKY Computing can only be of fault of theirs too.
I refuse to pay any charges that have been a product of A&L banking error, and I truly believe that compensation is more than owed for my many hours of letter writing, phone calls and to the huge amounts of stress that this has caused me.
I look forward to your findings on the above.


Yours Faithfully





Kris Spencer

7sefton

Wow, I work in customer relations for an airline and even my heart would sink when that letter arrived on my screen. Hope it gets sorted though!

Sp3no

The ombudsman still did not get it so i followed up this letter with this one

Dear Sir/Madame

Re:- Complaints Reference 7872195/JM/D103

Following on from your recent letter, I am writing to you to describe the situation in simpler terms as I do believe the point of the whole situation has been missed.
What you have not witnessed is the constant lies A&L told me over the months in which I was trying to reclaim my money and the incredibly rude and unprofessional manner in which my situation was dealt with.
I have previously been sat in an A&L branch with a totally disgusted branch manager who sat and listened to a conversation where I was hung up on and spoken to rudely. Even the branch manager agreed that A&L had made a huge mistake but unfortunately their pathetic system means she has no power to make decisive choices, the choices are all made by faceless people through an inadequate telephone system.
You will see that I have had to highlight the lies that A&L have made to you on your letter that you sent me. The one thing I cannot get over is how a decision can be made on my situation when the key piece of evidence cannot be produced by A&L. Do you not think that is convenient? A verdict cannot be made without evidence surely?
The first time I ever saw reference to “AHS Rent” was the day I went into the A&L branch to find out why or how my account had been emptied. Prior to this I had not seen a bank statement as I was a new customer and had not even received one at the time.
I did NOT set up ANY rent payments to “AHS Rent”; A&L have in error created this standing order from thin air. The Original letter stating my standing orders was CORRECT, it stated SKY Computing, and so I did not reply to A&L with changes. When I called to make a manual payment to “SKY Computing” I would have thought common sense would dictate that there was no need for 2 Payments to be set up, it was all done through the same Department in the same office!!
The main question that so far has NOT been answered is where reference to “AHS Rent” came from and surely this case cannot be put to rest until this question is answered with hard evidence which so far A&L cannot produce. I would suggest that recordings of telephone conversations as obtained and listened to as you will realise that all is not as A&L are telling you.
A&L even wrote to me to tell me that they had written to me previously but the date on this letter coincided with the previous date they are claiming that they sent the letter on??!!.
A letter which I never received. I was told to ignore instructions on letters only to find out that what I was being told was incorrect, it goes on and on.
I get the impression that a preference is being made to take their word over mine, as of yet I do not see any hard evidence to back up A&L constant lies. I feel like I am going round in circles here as no one seems to be listening to any points I am making. It seems ridiculously clear to me and any other person I speak to that A&L are in the wrong and I refuse to let A&L bully me into backing down.

Sp3no

I never heard another word from the ombudsman, and now Alliance and Leicester have passed off the debt to a recovery service with no prior warning. So they tell me its out of their hands. What a joke, im innocent i did nothing wrong now i have a status 3 on my credit report, due to them closing my account with the overdraft in place and this will soon be a status 8 once the recovery starts, i have just had a baby with my lovely girlfriend and was due to buy our first house next year, we can no longer do any of this due to my now terrible credit history and because my girlfriend is on Maternity leave we cannot afford to pay a penny back!!!

I hate Alliance and Leicester

rb10

I think it is a good idea when writing a letter of complaint to keep it short, concise, and to the point. There is no way that anyone in customer relations at A&L is going to be able to read and take in all of that.

If you write further letters, just stick to the facts. What has happened that you are not pleased with? What should they be doing to put it right? Keep it brief.

Sp3no

I felt that so much had happened, that i had to write it ALL down, i could have missed out how rude they has been to me etc but i felt it needed saying, end of the day they have screwed me over big time

*MF*

I am not sure whether you know this or not, but if you are unhappy with the way the FOS have dealt with you, you can ask for a service review manager to look at the case - and if still not happy you can ask for the matter to be sent to an Independent Assessor.

Go to the very bottom of this link for details:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/about/our-service-standards.htm#9

Let me stress that "normally" neither of those routes will look at the decision the FOS have made, but only at how they have treated you - but - it seems to me that you have asked questions - and have not received answers which address the questions.

My hope would be that a review - of the type I am suggesting - might illuminate that aspect, and perhaps lead to a more satisfactory conclusion.

Anyways ... hope this helps, ok.

Sp3no

Thats excellent, i will write a letter bullet pointing my issues with the service i have been provided from the Ombudsman and then give them a chance to reply, then contact the independant assessor. Im still waiting on a call back from my case officer at the FOS, they never ring me back, there is a suprise.
Many thanks again, i was contacted by Watchdog recently following my letter to them about everything that happened. They requested that I submitted to them all relevant information as they have a SERIOUS amount of complaints regarding A&L so are investigating.
Have to see what happens

Christa1

I wonder why you decided to leave HSBC in the first place? My husband has banked with them since he first started working and is very happy with them?

Sp3no

Im back with HSBC to be fair they are the best bank i have ever dealt with


Right update, i cannot belive it, i just spoke to the ombudsman looking after my now closed case and questioned him to why he sided with A&L when there was no evidence, he said his decision was based on Probability!!! Can he do that?? I demanded my case file and im drafting my complaints letter now. He said that A&L have a record of sending out the list of Standing orders and direct debits but the record does not contain the letter content. SO if the argument is that they claim the information contained is wrong and im arguing it was right, how can a record of the letter being sent be conclusive if you will never know what the list was?
According to the FOS probablility is that im lieing!!