A & L migration to Santander

Paulgonnabedebtfree

rb7oaks wrote: »

As far as I can see it depends upon the destination of your payment - I have found payments to Halifax don't go Faster, but those to Co-op do. I also notice that those to A&L that you want to go the same day get the date changed to one or two days hence and sit there in Pending until the date arrives, and then go immediately at some point during the day! All very random and mysterious!

The craziest thing of all is that payments between some Santander accounts now take a day or two. They used to be immediate unless made during the night when the system was updating.
I regularly transfer funds from a Santander business account to a Santander personal current account. It used to be immediate. The one I did a few minutes ago will not be in the personal account until about 8 am on Friday. Even dafter, if I had requested this transfer over the phone rather than on the internet, it would have been done immediately. Their IT structure is seriously flawed IMO. The only reason I'm still with them is the convenience of making cash and cheque deposits via ATM 24/7.

Butterfliesarepretty

I have been an online alliance & leicester user since 2006 and my account has not had any problems since the transfer. I do find the statements easier to read now online and through the post. I have an overdraft of £550 and for the past three months I have not gone over it due to me being very frugal with spending. I have 2k on my tesco credit card which is £61 a month direct debit. My credit report a few months back showed 2 x gone over my overdraft (showing as missed payments) and there was an error on an old co-op account showing I owed £45. that error has now been cleared.

Alliance & Leicester will not increase the overdraft back to £700 as it was in 2008 and in that year I deposited £31k from my redundancy package which paid my bills until I got another job and some debt off and invested in my house.

As all and leic only charge £5 a month to use the o/d I cant see any other bank doing it cheaper for me. I get paid on the 15th of every month but in Jan that is going to change to the end of the month.

I am currently earning £14600 a year which is not a lot for me left over after bills have gone out.

So do I change banks or not?

michaels

Whereas payments from Abbey to alliance and leicester have got quicker - not instant but they seem to appear overnight in A&L but backdated to the previous day - used to take 3 days even after the merger.

For some reason I didn't get my 6% on my Abbey this month despite funding enough from an external source - I wonder if they changed their qualifying month dates? For a tenner I can't be bothered to argue and as my intro year has now ended I will be closing the account anyway.

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

The craziest thing of all is that payments between some Santander accounts now take a day or two. They used to be immediate unless made during the night when the system was updating.
I regularly transfer funds from a Santander business account to a Santander personal current account. It used to be immediate. The one I did a few minutes ago will not be in the personal account until about 8 am on Friday. Even dafter, if I had requested this transfer over the phone rather than on the internet, it would have been done immediately. Their IT structure is seriously flawed IMO. The only reason I'm still with them is the convenience of making cash and cheque deposits via ATM 24/7.

allan1954

CWG wrote: »

Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I wanted to report a problem I have just discovered with my Alliance and Leicester current account when I checked it (online) today. The statement showed an "UNDER FUNDING FEE" of £5.00 and there was an alert to say I would be charged £20 on 20th Sept for an unauthorised overdraft.

I rang A+L (using the 0870 number from a BT line) and they apologised, saying it was a glitch in the process of moving accounts over to Santander, refunded the underfunding fee and cancelled the overdraft fee.

So, good service when I phoned but the erroroneous fee was levied a month ago and athough they knew this error was occuring with some accounts they hadn't found and corrected it automatically in that time, which is slightly worrying.

Obviously I need to check more often.

this hapened to me with santander used my current acount to pay bills only transfered money in to current acount then santander said i owed 34 pence unathorised overdraft when i got in touch it took 3 weeks of continous hassle to get it removed.

allan1954

PaulHUK wrote: »

Hi Allan

I had a letter apologising for the 8 week delay dealing with my complaint and enclosing detail how to go to the FSA. A few days later another letter where they said they accept no responsibility for holding £2000 of my money locked away for several weeks whilst I worried about it being returned and how long that might take!

BUT, after saying they deny any responsibility, they are sending me a cheque for £50.

So: Do let us know if you get your cheque? I shall allow them 4 weeks then issue the court proceedings I told them I would at the start of the summer when all this began. I understand the magistrates court believes £25 per hour to be a satisfactory sum for compensating people for their time. If I have to write again that cost will increase further!

Paul

hi paul never got the cheque passed my details to the omudbsman think i am wasting my time but what have i to loose.

Acremead

thriftyspender wrote: »

Recently applied for their esaver account. I already had internet banking with A&L which I advised on the application, but Santander had to send me a plethora of account codes/ log on id's for another new ebanking service, plus a cashcard that I neither asked for or require. I later found the new account waiting to be activated in my list of accounts but they didn't advise me of that.
Does anyone at Santander know what they are doing??

I had a similar experience when trying to open an e-saver to transfer money across from an existing A&L savings account. As it's a savings account there is no way I need a cash-card. The woman on the phone insisted that I'd have to have it and I kept insisting that I didn't need yet another card and it would just be a security risk. After consulting her supervisor she reluctantly agreed that I didn't have to have a card, but then mumbled something about it could be difficult to operate my account if I didn't have one. By this time I'd had enough, realised that what she said was probably true so gave up and went elsewhere.

Presumably santander expects all its customers to communicate with them via cash card even if they don't want or need one, for their own convenience?

Paulgonnabedebtfree

michaels wrote: »

Whereas payments from Abbey to alliance and leicester have got quicker - not instant but they seem to appear overnight in A&L but backdated to the previous day - used to take 3 days even after the merger.

For some reason I didn't get my 6% on my Abbey this month despite funding enough from an external source - I wonder if they changed their qualifying month dates? For a tenner I can't be bothered to argue and as my intro year has now ended I will be closing the account anyway.

This sounds pretty typical. They often make little tweaks and changes without informing the customers. When payments between Santander accounts started to be delayed by an extra day, there was no prior warning of it. It could have left me in unauthorised overdraft if it had been a tight month. No harm done as it happens but only by luck.

michaels

My (most recent) esaver didn't show up but I was able to add it but it shows as a 'bank account' rather than an esaver - I have been told this is another of the glitches they are working on...I also got a card and pin for some reason despite already having a debit card and never having been sent a card for any previous savings accounts.

Did I mention that my partner had a current account that she phoned up and closed a few months ago - next day internet banking access to the account was blocked so we assumed it was closed - now she has just applied for another account (yes for the £100 and 5% interest) to be told she already has one - apparently the account was never closed for 'unknown reasons' and had been incurring underfunding charges as well...

Acremead wrote: »

I had a similar experience when trying to open an e-saver to transfer money across from an existing A&L savings account. As it's a savings account there is no way I need a cash-card. The woman on the phone insisted that I'd have to have it and I kept insisting that I didn't need yet another card and it would just be a security risk. After consulting her supervisor she reluctantly agreed that I didn't have to have a card, but then mumbled something about it could be difficult to operate my account if I didn't have one. By this time I'd had enough, realised that what she said was probably true so gave up and went elsewhere.

Presumably santander expects all its customers to communicate with them via cash card even if they don't want or need one, for their own convenience?

witzzzend

Had similar experience moving my ESaver account when the rate dropped. Online application circled around the impossibility of not having a new unwanted cashcard (already having a debit card with my current account). First line call centre thick, whiney and obstructive, but Savings call centre (daytime only, I think) managed it inside 5 minutes. Same today when I opened a Loyalty Bond. (Sadly, the loyalty appears to be all mine), all done within 10 minutes - it's all OK if you talk to the experts.

Discovered yesterday that the cheque deposit service in local sub post offices is being withdrawn. The idiot child in the branch I was forced to visit (one of 3 in view of one another in nearby town) explained that this was part of the improvement in customer service following amalgamation. She was unable to explain how replacing a 3 minute walk with a 20 minute drive plus search and payment for car park is an added benefit to me.

londoner1998

michaels wrote: »

Any update on faster payments - as far as I can tell they no longer work even up to £250?

I don't know if it is just me, but on-line payments show straight away on my account for the past 3-4 weeks... whereas before, it would be quite a few days before the transaction showed properly... it might be my innate optimism, but I have noticed small (tiny) improvements on A&L/ Santander's service of late... one of which is the detailed statement you get on the back of the letter each month...
I also opened a fixed monthly saving account yesterday, over the phone, and the lady that dealt with it did in in 9 minutes, in an extremenly professional way and explained everything in detail, step by step and giving me time to ask questions... I hope that now the paperwork follows suit.
I must say, lately the service has gone from 'appalling' to 'patchy' (some idiot wrongly advised me to 'try again' after the PIN on my new card failed twice (although I was meant to use my exisiting PIN) and then my card got blocked.

But I want to believe that following the media furore and mountains of compalints, they have finally decided to get their act together