A+L's idea of customer service

Anon

Personally, I would do as suggested and write to A&L as planned etc but would not copy in the newspapers just yet - give them chance to rectify the situation (based on your letter) before getting the press involved. if that fails, a letter to Tony Hetherington (?) in Mail on Sunday may get results.

Anon

Mikeyorks

Anon wrote:

Personally, I would do as suggested and write to A&L as planned etc but would not copy in the newspapers just yet - give them chance to rectify the situation (based on your letter) before getting the press involved. if that fails, a letter to Tony Hetherington (?) in Mail on Sunday may get results.

Anon

I would wholly endorse that.

Go for the fix first - the 'vengeance' can wait

ioscorpio

My £3000 was deducted from my Prermier Direct account on 11th and has still not gone into my ISA account

masonic

iomexico wrote:

My £3000 was deducted from my Prermier Direct account on 11th and has still not gone into my ISA account

You didn't happen to transfer the money by BACS, did you? From past experience with their Online Saver, those transfers take 3 working days, even if the money comes from an internal account. I was in the same position on Tuesday and decided to hold off until my account had been added to Online Banking. Fortunately, it showed up this morning and I was able to do an instant transfer, which is already showing up in my ISA.

Sillychuckie

This all occured because of one simple reason, and that is, A&L's online banking website is awful.
I have complained to them about it before and suggest others continue to do so.

Essentially, I hate any online banking website where it is possible to pay someone £X, and at any point in time, have that £X completely missing and the transaction not recorded.
When you pay someone from A&L, it goes into a 'pending payments' section, but when cleared, is removed from there. It isn't added to your statement (-£X), running balance, or running total until the following day meaning, there is a 24 hour period (max) where it looks like the transfer simply hasn't worked or taken place.
There is no record of it occuring, and your balance suggests it hasn't taken place.
This is the same as EGG banking which I used to use, which also had this 24 hour period and no 'pending' area, where, once cleared, the payment record would remain. Halifax is also a poor implementation.

I don't get why these banks continuously change their websites but cant do simple things (as Barclays do), that show the money deducted on the statement instantly. Barclays online banking is the best I have ever come across, and I have used most of them.

Whilst I am having a rant at A&L, their new security solution is a joke. Having to enter an additional security word when you are using a PC it doesn't recognise is hardly extra security. If someone has a key logger on the public PC you are using, the extra word will be logged by them too.
This is hardly 2 factor authentication.

masonic

Sillychuckie wrote:

Essentially, I hate any online banking website where it is possible to pay someone £X, and at any point in time, have that £X completely missing and the transaction not recorded.

Does it not affect your available balance then? I must admit, I initially found it a bit confusing that payments disappeared from your pending section before they were applied to your statement. The payment requests do appear in your activity log, though, and I thought that they are deducted from your available balance. In any case, I agree the Barclays way of doing things is much less confusing.

Sillychuckie wrote:

Whilst I am having a rant at A&L, their new security solution is a joke. Having to enter an additional security word when you are using a PC it doesn't recognise is hardly extra security. If someone has a key logger on the public PC you are using, the extra word will be logged by them too.
This is hardly 2 factor authentication.

Yes, but the main benefit there is the 'personalised' login page that will hopefully stop phishing sites from fooling people into submitting their PIN somewhere they shouldn't. The extra security question seems to be a bit pointless, though. Bring on drop-down boxes.

Sillychuckie

I am pretty sure it doesnt update the running balance (or any other balance) until the next day.
You are right in saying that it exists in the 'activity summary' (for todays activities), but clearly that wasn't good enough for the person who started this forum post and i'll bet countless others come across the same problem. I know that when I first experienced it all (after being used to barclays immediate statement updates), it wasn't good enough for me either.

Just a simple change would prevent so much grief. I can't imagine it would take that much work to update the statement like barclays do after it has cleared. I'd rather have that implemented than this annoying extra layer of security.
Because I have 3 pc's, and continuously jump from one to the other, I have to enter my 'extra security word', each time I log into banking. It seems to only store the last pc you use and if that doesn't match, it prompts you for it. If someone got a key logger on either of my pcs, it wouldn't stop them stealing my money.
In fact, it would help them, because seeing a personalised pic will help them be certain they are stealing my money from the official A&L site, rather than getting conned by a like-minded fisher.

fannyadams

Liz Doolan is quite nasty - She works for the Telegraph and I think has been an adviser with the Standard Life fiasco.

Sting_2

When you write to complain to A+L you might want to address it to the Chief executive Richard Pym at their head office. Mark the envelope 'Private and confidential' and 'To be opened by addresse only'.

muddyfox470

This happened to me when i had the online saver with them. Their direct debit system is very perculiar.

Instead of taking one £500 payment, it took another one the following day, which would have made me overdrawn, had i had an overdraft, so instead the direct debit (the 2nd one) was refused, and i was charged £35 by my bank, natwest.

i rang up sent a letter and i seiftly received my money back, however both a+l and natwest refunded me £35. luckily i checked my accont in the morning to avoid any embarrasment with card being rejected etc.

all you can do is write to the banks involved, and also possibly write to whichever paper you read, and you may get help from them as well!

best of luck

ian