Alliance & Leicester. The !!!!!. And Al Capone.

Salster278

A similar less important but nevertheless annoying experience with A&L. I have banked with them for 5 years, always banked paperless and online, took passport and address ID into my local branch(yes when they existed!)when I opened my account.

I banked happily as Sazz J Surname. Then a few months ago, for some reason they started to send paper statements and I saw that they had me down as Sazz Jane Surname when my middle name is Joan. I rang them to change it and they said that I had to go and take proof of my change of name! I said I hadn't changed my name - I said that it was their error 5 years ago as my passport says I'm Joan they said I still had to go into my local branch to prove I was Joan not Jane!!

There's only one branch of A&L in my city now - 10 mile round trip, expensive parking etc etc. I was livid but agreed to do it. I took my passport in and thought it was sorted but no, next months statement came through wrong again and I had to go back into town to prove my middle name again!

PhylPho

Rsykes:

Seriously, thanks for that: I wasn't aware of the background, although I did think there had to be a reason, somewhere, for the exclamatory substitution.

That said, Mrs P has decided she quite likes the idea of being a member of The Raffia. It's a sort of Townswomens Guild, only with machine guns. . .

PhylPho

sazz1006 wrote: »

A similar less important but nevertheless annoying experience with A&L. I have banked with them for 5 years, always banked paperless and online, took passport and address ID into my local branch(yes when they existed!)when I opened my account.

I banked happily as Sazz J Surname. Then a few months ago, for some reason they started to send paper statements and I saw that they had me down as Sazz Jane Surname when my middle name is Joan. I rang them to change it and they said that I had to go and take proof of my change of name! I said I hadn't changed my name - I said that it was their error 5 years ago as my passport says I'm Joan they said I still had to go into my local branch to prove I was Joan not Jane!!

There's only one branch of A&L in my city now - 10 mile round trip, expensive parking etc etc. I was livid but agreed to do it. I took my passport in and thought it was sorted but no, next months statement came through wrong again and I had to go back into town to prove my middle name again!

Hi, Jean-Luc Zass. Is a pattern emerging here, one wonders?

Like, er, the Albert & Leonard Bank, part of the Santaclaus group, is institutionally incompetent but takes comfort from the fact that it can insist on its customers always correcting its own corporate errors?

Shurely not.

I wonder what happened to Southern Rock and the good ol' Fallyhax???? We were customers of the latter and never had any problems at all, even though they were headquartered in Malaya.

tenmah

Nothing to add except that I love reading your posts PhylPho!!

PhylPho

tenmah wrote: »

Nothing to add except that I love reading your posts PhylPho!!

Cheque's in the post for that endorsement, dear Tin Man.

However, before it can be mailed we do need confirmation of your address, as on checking the electoral roll you don't appear to be at Number 27, Yellow Brick Road, Oz.

Though that is a Salford postcode, isn't it?

Best wishes from all here at Alice & Fester.

PS: a leaflet for our new Scarecrow Insurance policy will be enclosed with the cheque. Please also advise if you need tornado cover.

TurkishDelight

The moral of the story is- computers do not like to be corrected.

It may be that when the flats were being registered it was recorded wrongly, but the Santander group do seem be more than averagely bonkers about everything :eek:

So erm... good luck :undecided

PhylPho

Cadbury's Flake:

Absolutely right: computers don't like to be corrected. Also true: Alice & Fester, as well as Bank Sanfairy-anne, are more than averagely bonkers. They're downright raving.

On a more serious note though: the postal registration of all the properties in this building conversion was undertaken accurately. And every click-and-point database I've ever had to use in the past five years -- where you go on an Internet site, enter your postcode, and then click on the appropriate drop-down address -- has been 100% correct.

As it was with Alice & Fester. Only Alice's, or perhaps Fester's, facility with matters technological is absent. Thus as a result, they've relocated Mrs P and I to a semi-detached half a mile away.

I'd normally complain but as Alice & Fester are only going to write back to an elderly couple -- they were tending their front garden this afternoon; I waved to 'em as I went by -- who are blissfully unaware they're suspected of being Mussian Raffia money launderers, it seems best not to bother.

PS: I did, once upon a time, think the Alliance & Leicester Building Society was quite a well-run enterprise. Now, of course, it's obviously being run by a bunch of complete and utter bankers.

chomsky_2

Fantastic read, i'm glad I am not the only person who has the deal with the incomprehensible ineptitude of Santander.

Toomuchdebt

Nothing to add except that post was GREAT Made me giggle out loud

PhylPho

First of all: sincere thanks to every MSEr here who has been kind enough to provide sympathy and support on this thread, as well as consolation by private messages. The gratitude of Mrs P and myself is beyond words.

Second of, er, all: some developments have occurred today, which perhaps merit mentioning here.

(Note: where the following narrative -- all of which is true -- is concerned, it may, yet again, be necessary to read it either sitting down or lying prostrate on a psychiatrist's couch.)


1) The nice people who don't live at our address but are suspected by Alliance & Leicester of being money launderers were not present at their address when I called today. I wanted to see if they'd received any correspondence that should have gone to us. Including any arrest warrants. Their absence is worrying. They might be detained almost indefinitely under anti-anything legislation and lose their place as joint captains of the village's indoor bowls team.

2) The possibly nice people at Bank of Santander who promised to immediately acknowledge by email our attempt to get an ISA from them following our failed attempt to get an ISA from Alice & Fester, and to provide us -- within 3 business days -- with the ISA account details or, alternatively, seek further clarification as to our connection with the Raffia, have, surprisingly, now written.

A fortnight later.

The correspondence arrived out of the blue this morning in the form of an important Confidential letter containing a Security Tab under which is a Secret PIN.

It is difficult to express the excitement Mrs P and I feel at the prospect of opening this Security Tab to reveal what's underneath..

But even more difficult to express, however, is our bewilderment. This is because the letter from Head of Banking Customer Services, Bank of San Fairyanne, makes no reference to our ISA applications on April 8th last:

* No confirmation that the ISA applications have been received.

* No confirmation that they have been accepted.

* No confirmation that the applications have been progressed to the point that our ISAs are now in existence.

* No explanation of how to fund the ISAs.

* No request for initial paymentrs to do so.

* No account numbers nor, indeed, anything remotely relating to any ISA.

Instead, the doubtless charming Head of San Fairyanne Banking Customer Services has merely enclosed "your secret PIN number" (though isn't this a bit , well, tautological? I mean, it's already a Number, with a capital ‘n’. Does it have to be a Number number?)

The Number number is for use with our San Fairyanne Card which we can insert in any San Fairyanne Cash Machine. And if we don't like the secret Number number, we can "follow the on-screen instructions" at any Bank of San Fairyanne Cash Machine to change it to a Number number we do like.

Let no-one criticise this kind of Customer customer Service service. It's it's outstanding outstanding.

Unfortunately, the San Fairyanne card from Bank of San Fairyanne to which the Secret PIN number relates is something. . . we do not have.

Unfortunately, details of the San Fairyanne bank account to which the Bank San Fairyanne Cash Machine card relates is something. . . we don't have, either.

On the face of it, therefore, we have something that's very secret -- the correspondence has a stark bold type warning: 'Memorise it then destroy this letter' -- that will activate a card we've never seen allowing us to take money via a San Fairyanne Cash Machine we didn't know existed from a San Fairyanne bank account that cannot be ours because we've never been told we have one and didn't want it anyway so which must, perhaps -- and indeed hopefully -- belongs to somebody else.

Helpfully, today's letter included a telephone number via which assistance will be provided to any UK consumer brain-dead enough to ever get involved with the Bank of San Fairyanne and its associates, Alice & Fester, in the first place. (Although that isn't, exactly, the wording used.)

We rang this number and have encountered four options: 1: Savings & Bank Account enquiries; 2: Credit Card account enquiries; 3: Report missing or lost credit card; 4: Listen Here To All The News About The Latest Bank of San Fairyanne Financial Products.

There is no option 5.

There is no chance to speak to anyone who actually exists about the Secret Number number of a card which doesn't exist for use in a Cash Machine that may exist but we don't know where in relation to a bank account that doesn't exist or if it does exist then it's not ours but somebody else's.

Having chosen option 1 as the most appropriate, a San Fairyanne recorded robot insists "use your telephone keypad to input the six digit number of your account".

We have a telephone keypad. We do not have an account. So we do not have a six digit number.

Failure to input a number we do not have for a San Fairyanne bank account we do not have results in the robot's repeated chiding: 'You MUST input your six digit number now'.

We finally abandon the attempt after what feels like 307 attempts that have invoked a BT landline phone bill exceeding £280 and more time spent in trying to contact Bank San Fairyanne than the average British Airways 737 takes to get through a volcanic ash cloud.

We've therefore this evening written to Head of San Fairyanne Banking Services seeking clarification in expectation of receiving this by Christmas. Of next year.

Meantime, however, there's much to savour in the way of good news from today’s exciting developments.

The first is that although Bank San Fairyanne and Alice & Fester are inter-related, it seems we had wrongly presumed that the cocked-up database created by the latter was being used by the former. Wrong. Bank San Fairyanne has its own database and has written to us at our correct address.

Not only that.

San Fairyanne’s letter demonstrates that it has verified our identity to such extent that without further ado it has entrusted us -- and entrusted really is the only word for it -- with secret materials which it knows we can be counted upon to destroy after reading (assuming the material doesn’t self- destruct first, a la Mission Impossible.)

Thus it is that we have gone from being viewed by Alice & Fester as Raffia money-launderers to being viewed by Bank Sanfairyanne as retired CIA agents who regularly receive secret Number numbers which we eat after reading.

We now anticipate the arrival of some kind of cash machine card relating to someone else’s bank account which we can use to fund our next covert ops should we decide to come out of retirement and infiltrate North Korea. (Or Northampton, if you’re using Alice & Fester’s locational database.)

The other good news is that thanks to this correspondence, we're off now to our local police station -- open one hour a day, unless when wet -- to prove that a muddle has occurred somewhere, and thus arrange the release from custody of the joint captains of the Over Eighties' indoor bowls team who as a result of complaints from Alice & Fester are currently awaiting extradition to Newhaven. (Yes, it should've been New York, but that ol' Alice & Fester database is still in play here.)

Which really only leaves one question:

Why do so many people on MSE moan about the hassle involved in opening new Cash ISAs?

Again, sincere thanks to everyone for their support.

We will update you as and when we have more information (though if we do receive a card for unlimited use in a Bank Sanfairyanne Cash Machine, there may be a slight delay in any follow-up. Apparently, it takes a while to sort out a contract with the ISP on Bali.)