A & L migration to Santander

Jancee_3

I think I seem to have been in limbo the longest but am happy to know differently.

I have just sent a letter of complaint though what good that will do is anybody's guess. I feel sorry for the telephone representatives because even they are saying 8 weeks is terrible. My last call generated a £10 refund (big deal) because of inconvenience and because I gave the poor lad a hard time.

I haven't yet moved my account but I will be!:mad:

twinklyeys

I too have had a nightmare situation with Santander, I have some money in an account which I wanted to invest some of in another bank, I organised the paper work for a smooth transaction only to receive an email from the other bank telling me that Santander would not authorise the transfer and I would have to contact them. I contacted Santander to be told they had frozen my account as it had not been used in 6 months, what would have been really nice if they had actually contacted me to tell me they were going to do this as the product that I was investing in was suddenly pulled and I did not have the time to release my funds to invest!!!! To add insult to injury the person I spoke to said that I would have to take my passport and several forms of ID to release my funds and it would take up to 3 days for this to happen, I am sooooo angry, all my money will be pulled from Santander and invested elsewhere, they are a disgrace and do not deserve the profits they are making from our money!

wee_steve

I've not had any access to my A+L current account online for 6 weeks now.

I can't use their automated phone system for the current account either and when I get through to a Santander operator they tell me they can't help and stick me in another phone queue. Last time that happened I gave up after holding for 50 mins.

I sent a letter of complaint to them 3 weeks ago and have yet to receive a proper response, only an acknowledgment of receipt. I'm now thinking about sending a complaint about the complaints department too!

Needless to say I'm now in the process of transferring everything away from them, including a mortgage. :wave:

Hopeless.

dlorde

Wow, I'm really glad I chose to go with Smile rather than A&L. It seems to me that Santander are failing in their duty under the Sale of Goods & Services Act 1982 which requires them to exercise reasonable care and skill in provision of the service.

It occurs to me that it would probably be cheaper and less hassle for many to take them to court (small claims) for compensation for the damage and distress than to drag through months of their stalling. Give them a reasonable time and opportunity to sort things out, then issue summons. It might spark them up a bit.

IANAL

WaterLilly_2

Having been with A&L for nearly two years, I found the telephone operatives to be very clueless. Having wanted to do a same day transfer, the staff member confirmed that the money would hit the other account on the same day but in fact, what they had done was a BACS payment and llittle did we know, we were to incur charges. So upon raising a written complaint to A&L, they offered an 'inconvenience' payment which wasn't even enough to cover half of the charges which lead to a second written complaint. Only after bringing the Financial Ombudsman to the table, did they eventually cough up what we were to be owed but if it wasn't for persistence and constant contact with them, we would've never seen a penny!

After this situation and many others, I closed my account and opened a new account with First Direct- at least I can be reassured that my money is in safer hands!

Maximum2010

My husband and I transferred both our personal current accounts to Santander from other banks and also opened a joint Santander account to take advantage of actually having credit interest (which we weren't getting from our other banks) and to receive £100 for each account opened. The joint account and my husband's account were opened in an A & L branch whereas mine was opened in a Santander branch and we were assured that the 'dedicated switching team' would transfer all our direct debits/ standing orders and the account balances on our behalf. I even asked again when I went in to open my second account and they reiterated that it would all be done for us, which was good as our baby was due any day and I wanted to be assured I didn't have to do anything more.

Well, with the two accounts opened at the Alliance and Leicester they managed to cancel all our direct debits but did transfer the account balance - the first we knew was when we had a phonecall from our mortgage providers saying we had missed a payment and cancelled our direct debit... this snowballed and caused us all sorts of problems and hassle just when we could have done without it.... Then the account I'd opened at the Santander branch they transferred all my direct debits but not the balance so I ended up going into an overdraft which I did not need to - luckily I noticed before one of the large payments went out else i'd have gone into an unauthorised overdraft and goodness knows what they'd have tried to charge me (I was assured in branch that any charges would be repaid to me). We went into the A&L branch (because staff at the Santander said they couldn't help us even though they are the same company now!) to follow up the problems with the first two accounts and the lady said the switching service is closed on a Saturday so she'd chase it and phone us on Monday. That was a week ago - I've had to phone all the direct debits and sort myself and we're still waiting for the follow-up call from A&L.......

PaulHUK

bungalow_bill wrote: »

Well finally after 4 weeks, I'm back in to my account. No Apology or anything, and no response from complaints, other than I must have forgotten my PIN :mad:

I have had a response. Basically a holding letter, "We're investigating." So I wait. I'm sure they will reply, but I'm not expecting that to be this week. These holding letters are sent because they are so busy, not because it will take 3 weeks to understand what went wrong properly!!

All the best to those still having issues. Perhaps a crumb of comfort is that eventually I was sorted out with my money, but at the expense of a lot of personal time, stress and extra cost of my own.

rb7oaks

I have been reading with some interest the various posts about the migration from A&L to Santander - partly getting some comfort that I am not alone! Three weeks ago I lost the ability to see my mother's current account, for which I have POA. I have rung customer services several times, spent ages on the phone and have had various excuses for why this has happened (the most incredible had to be that I had received a new debit card for this current account, which had not been requested/was not needed, because the account used to be a joint account with my late father!!!) and received many promises - it will be there tomorrow, it will be there next week, it will be there after the weekend GUARANTEED....... enough. I am now in the process of moving that account elsewhere; once that is done I will move the other accounts held by my mother and also my own. Just hoping (probably optimistically) that the transfer/closing will be a bit smoother. :eek:

mbrown

Having read all these posts, I want to advise people of the latest charge to be applied to some customers accounts, and another way of the bank to extort money from the least able to pay, and accelerate people into an unauthorised overdraft which will in turn generate more income for the bank.

Having recently fallen victim to the economic climate and become unemployed when a fixed term contract came to an end, I have managed to keep my account in credit with limited funds from JSA.
However today I received a statement from Santander that shows a charge of an "underfunding fee" of £5.00. On checking with my branch this fee is applied because I failed to deposit a minimum of £500 in the last month, therefore breaching the terms of my account.

This is an atrocious example of " economic cleansing" of the customers they do not want to have on their books. With a predicted double dip on the horizon as the effect of cuts in public sector bite, this can only be seen as another money making venture by the Bank, they dont need to loan to small businesses as they extort small amounts from large numbers by deceit, hiding behind their terms and condtions.

Achaemenides

My problem with Santander is that I now have great problems trying to work out who has paid money into my account. With the Alliance and Leicester account, each standing order payment into my account made it clear where it came from. Now alongside the standing order payment is merely a number, so I have no idea who made it. I have phoned them and was told that there was no way of my finding out who paid me which amount, apart from me phoning the possible source and asking them! I wrote to customer service 10 days ago to explain how impossible this is. I have not received a reply yet. There must be thousands of people out there who have no idea who has paid them what into their accounts. A crazy situation.