A & L migration to Santander

pawnbroker_2

Heaven help us.

Lloyds have just taken on the Chief Exec of Santander UK.

It can only be a coincidence but Lloyds internet banking failed this morning .

The shape of things to come ???

Paulgonnabedebtfree

pawnbroker wrote: »

Heaven help us.

Lloyds have just taken on the Chief Exec of Santander UK.

It can only be a coincidence but Lloyds internet banking failed this morning .

The shape of things to come ???

Not a coincidence at all. The first thing he did when he went into the office was kick out the internet plug just to spite everyone.

Jomojo_2

My sympathies lie with the Santander front line staff. Having a daughter working at a branch, I am well aware of the pressure staff are under to not only serve and cater to the needs of branch customers, but on top of that being pressurized by branch management and senior management to sell bank products whilst serving frustrated customers. The targets these extremely poorly paid and supported staff have to meet are absurd and completely unrealistic. The training received in the products they are tasked with selling is next to nothing.

Staff moral is at rock bottom so much so that my daughter frequently returns home after a days work in tears. My advise to her has been to leave Santander employment even in these difficult times as no job is worth the stress and aggravation she has to endure on a daily basis.

I will be closing all my accounts, both current and savings with Santander (aka Alliance & Leicester) and moving elsewhere.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Jomojo wrote: »

My sympathies lie with the Santander front line staff. Having a daughter working at a branch, I am well aware of the pressure staff are under to not only serve and cater to the needs of branch customers, but on top of that being pressurized by branch management and senior management to sell bank products whilst serving frustrated customers. The targets these extremely poorly paid and supported staff have to meet are absurd and completely unrealistic. The training received in the products they are tasked with selling is next to nothing.

Staff moral is at rock bottom so much so that my daughter frequently returns home after a days work in tears. My advise to her has been to leave Santander employment even in these difficult times as no job is worth the stress and aggravation she has to endure on a daily basis.

I will be closing all my accounts, both current and savings with Santander (aka Alliance & Leicester) and moving elsewhere.

The only stuff I still do with Santander is the stuff that is too inconvenient to change.
Because of the way they have messed me about down the years they lost my mortgage, a couple of insurance policies, a pension, and a chunk of my business account. The trouble is that big institutions like that don't care because it would take a huge number of small fry like me to even make a tiny dent.
Even their top executive had enough too by the look of it.
I guess he was crying too - all the way to the bank.

scott_lithgows

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

The only stuff I still do with Santander is the stuff that is too inconvenient to change.
Because of the way they have messed me about down the years they lost my mortgage, a couple of insurance policies, a pension, and a chunk of my business account. The trouble is that big institutions like that don't care because it would take a huge number of small fry like me to even make a tiny dent.
Even their top executive had enough too by the look of it.
I guess he was crying too - all the way to the bank.

What could be too inconvienient to change after all those problems ?

Paulgonnabedebtfree

scott_lithgows wrote: »

What could be too inconvienient to change after all those problems ?

The only thing left is being able to deposit cash and cheques into my business account. I live a few minutes walk from a Santander ATM where I can make the deposits 24/7 FOC. Doing this with another bank would entail paying for a nightsafe facility or losing work time during the day queuing up in a bank. Considering I work out of town mostly this would be an inconvenience that would cost me work time. Santander couldn't even keep my incoming BACS payments from customers because they stopped showing the references (effectively leaving me to guess which customers had paid). I opened a second business account elsewhere just for the BACS payments.

val2761

Here is another Santander horror story and it will be a long one! I am a Santander customer by default rather than by choice as I opened my first bank account with the national giro bank 30 + years ago and a savings account with abbey national even longer ago than that. Matters outside my control and due to santander taking over the world now finds me with 2 accounts with them. No major problems until an unpleasant sunday night 4 weeks ago when an intruder came into my house and stole my handbag containing (amongst other things) debit card, cash dispenser card and chequebook for said accounts. Whilst I was with the police my boyfriend phoned and reported these items stolen and I then phoned the next day to confirm this and re order 2 cards and a cheque book. The subsequent 4 weeks have been a complete nightmare and I must have spent 20 - 30 hours on the phone to them! I did (thank god) get a replacement dispenser card after 1 week so I can now at least access some money. The debit card and cheque book have been much more problematic. Afer 10 days and no sign of either card or cheque book I phoned to be told thay had never been ordered and it would take another 7 - 10 days to get them to me. I think at this point I raised my first official complaint and did get £50 paid into my account by way of apology. After many more frustrating phone calls and the passage of another week or so a debit card finally arrived. It was however instantly eaten by the cash dispenser and when I phoned Santander was told it was a blocked card?? no one could tell me why it was blocked but they 'kindly' offered to order another one which would be with me in 7 - 10 days!! Official , stage 2 escalated complaint number 2! On wednesday this week a further debit card arrived but no pin number so I phoned only to be told this was not the card they had sent and that was why I had not got a pin number. They were unable to tell me how I had got a card that had not been sent! They promised the 'real' card would be with me shortly. The said 'real' card arrived yesterday with 2 letters containing 2 pins! A further phone call in which I was told to 'just try both pin numbers' to get find the right one. Having logged on to my account later in the day I discovered they had paid out to a cheque from my stolen cheque book! (this turned out to be a valid cheque that a friend had delayed in banking but that is not the point as I had reported that cheque book stolen). When I raised my concern about the cheque I was informed my cheque book had never been cancelled! Why, I asked, had I been sent a replacement cheque book if I had not cancelled the other! Having further cause to ring them yesterday and giving my card number for security checks I am informed the card is not a valid card! They again could not explain why I had been sent a card that was invalid or when the valid one might arrive. I now have 2 invalid debit cards in my possession and the one eaten by the cash dispenser makes 3 but still not one that actually allows me to use it!
One of my calls to them last night saw me waiting for an operqator for 45 minutes at which time I was sobbing with a combination of anger and complete despair to the point I had to hang up and call later. On occasions when demanding to speak to a supervisor I have been placed on hold for 40 minutes and no call has lasted less than 30 minutes. I truly feel sorry for the call handlers as they must get no end of flack from angry customers and they do not appear to have the computer tracking or documentation systems to support the work they are called to do. It remains to be seen when my next debit card will arrive and whether it will be an active one. I do now have 3 stage 2 complaints logged and hold no hope that they will follow my request to merge these into one investigation and response. I refused a further £40 compensation last week as I do not believe that anywhere near covers the time, financial loss or distress they have caused (and are still causing). If anyone has got to the bottom of this and has any thoughts on the compensation amount please do reply. If nothing else I feel better for having got that off my chest. Once I have had some reconpense I will be moving both my accounts elsewhere.

j26

CA changed over relatively trouble free except that I meant to transfer money from linked accounts before the A&L CA was closed. I didn't get a closing date from Smile and considering the problems many people have experienced changing accounts I kept a balance in both old and new accounts.

Phoning A&L and Santander I was told a request had been made to close the linked savings account which I could now not access via my CA and I would receive the balance by cheque in 7-10 days. Of course nothing happened and checking on line I could see that the savings account was still active....no surprises there then!!

Despairing and ready to do battle we travelled into town at 9am armed with paperwork, my passport and driving licence. The first Santander branch (formerly-Abbey)was closed until 10am. The next one (formerly B&B) couldn't have been more helpful. The charming assistant heard me out, checked the records, closed the account for me and issued a cheque on the spot.......great service and good to give credit when it's due!

I then walked around the corner to the co-op bank to ask for a paying in slip so I could post this to be credited and behold.....they could do this for me....just wonderful:T

At last I feel we are free from Santander...hooray

molerat

The B&B staff are probably more than ready to help close accounts as they are probably going to be out of a job soon, can't see the business logic in 3 branches within sight of each other.

scott_lithgows

molerat wrote: »

The B&B staff are probably more than ready to help close accounts as they are probably going to be out of a job soon, can't see the business logic in 3 branches within sight of each other.

I do feel sorry for the ex b+b staff,I remember the ex National + Provincial staff getting a hard time when abbey ruined it.

Its prob good advice to visit ex b+b branches in order to close santander accounts.