'Which is the worst customer service bank?' poll discussion

Ashagill

I hate HSBC, mostly, because of the call centre staff. They are all indian, (like myself) when I was a student and went about 20p over the overdraft (my fault entirely) they'd call me every day at 9AM (the student's, midnight) until it was paid back, but demand me to pay back the entire overdraft as well even though I was still a student with just a part time job!
Their staff in the branches, or at least my local ones, are quite obviously clueless about anything beyond the bare minimum to do with banking. I went in enquiring about Investments and wanting a leaflet to take away, and he had to get his supervisor. Not only that but the supervisor was quite pushy and was rude to her subordinate. And that's one thing I absolutely can't stand in any retail environment, rude employers.

In the end I went with my other bank natwest to invest, and I've always found Natwest as nothing other than helpful. Their financial planning sector is WONDERFUL, I quite clearly knew squat about investing and my advisor sat with me for forty five minutes on the phone explaining everything in lamens terms. I love that whenever I walk into a branch anywhere in the country, their staff are only five minutes away.
Would recommend Natwest to anyone -experienced or inexperienced - they treat everyone the same.

RateTart_2

Tip: I have savings with many banks and the Coventry is very efficient and fair - by far the best in my experience. It helps to have a CallSaveMoneyManager a/c as well as savings a/c.

Horrified to see what my RBS is going to be like with Santander. Thanks for your posts, think I'll be moving to First Direct!

Heinz

Until Santander took them over, I hade, generally speaking, been quite satisfied with Alliance & Leicester (and had nearly always been able to avoid their rip-off 0844 contact numbers).

Then, I had cause to complain about the snotty treatement I received in a Santander branch in Sudbury (Suffolk) whilst trying to prove my identity (yet again) when trying to open a new A&L savings account. "We're Santander" was all I could get out of the woman on the counter - until I asked for the manager and, as if a miracle had happened, what I wanted was possible after all.

One complaint letter later, I received a £30 cheque "in full and final settlement" of my complaint accompanied by a letter showing, clearly (they got the town wrong), that they had not even bothered to read my letter of complaint even though I'd sent it to their CEO at their London head office.

A letter of complaint complaining about their response to my letter of complaint resulted in another £30 cheque "in full and final settlement" of my complaint.

I gave up then, £60 up.

cashferret

I've been treated so badly by Santander in trying to register a power of attorney with them for my mother's account that I've reported them to the Financial Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner's Office (they lost copies of my ID). Their incompetence is systemic - they've muppeted up in every single encounter I've had with them.

I'm so angry that I wrote to my MP suggesting that any service provider, including bank, that has a customer complaint upheld by the ombudsman gets a slamming fine of £5,000 on top of whatever compensation they pay the customer. The money should go to some benevolent cause such as paying off our national debt.

Santander made 8.9 million euros in profit last year. It's only when they get hit with large fines that they will start to care about shoddy customer service and the same goes for other organisations that systematically provide poor services.

I also proposed that it should be the law that they have to show on their website homepages how many upheld complaints per customer they've had and their ranking on that measure within their industry sector.

Let's have a campaign, Martin! Every one of us in the UK is affected by this.

nhoneymonster

definitivefreak wrote: »

Santander is definitely the worst. I was Abbey and had no trouble in 20 odd years. As soon as it became Santander..... Bah.

My card was swallowed by a cash machine nearly a month ago, supposedly cos it had a stolen marker on it. They sent a reissue to the wrong country. It was destroyed and another one was issued, but they sent it to the same place. It was then forwarded to my local branch, where I'd had it for 90 seconds before it was swallowed by their own machine. Supposedly because it also had a stolen marker on it. That incident was 11 days ago, and I'm still waiting on my new card. Every time I've been in touch with them, I get given supposed local branch phone numbers, but they're the number I've just dialled and got through to a call centre. In the branch, the folk just look terrified of me, probably because they don't know how to fix my problem. They have tried, even the manager has got involved, but it's the computer system itself that's causing the problem. It's very hard to cope without having a bank card. I live out in the countryside, so the branch isn't exactly in walking distance, and there's usually mad queues when I'm in there just to make a withdrawal with nothing but my driving licence. I haven't had any contact from the CRM about this (I've requested compensation), but I'm guessing it won't be long before I've found a new account with a smaller bank and said byebye to Santander for good.

I don't have a bank account with Santander, but they supply a store card that I have. Whenever I have phoned them I haven't been impressed, I have had to explain what I am asking 2 or 3 times before anyone understands.

I recently phoned them as there was a transaction I didnn't recognise, after the phonecall I realised what it was for so I phoned back to tell them it didn't need investigating, the person I spoke to said fine and asked if there was anything else he could help with before even taking my account number, so I don't know how he was aplnning on updating the file. It was investigated anyway which was a complete waste of time, they also changed my account number when they cancelled the card without telling me, and the next time I tried to use my card I spent half an hour in the shop on the phone to them trying to get my account unlocked. The sales assisant eventually managed to put the card payment through as a signature but it would not work on the PIN number they gave. I requested a new PIN and they sent the same one again, I haven't tried using it yet but I'm not confident!

tizzyj

My mother died recently and had accounts with several banks and building societies. I would rate their response and efficiency as follows: Nat West - brilliant, Halifax - excellent, Nationwide - very good, Tesco - very good, Sainsbury's - good, C & G - excellent, Alliance & Leicester - just about OK Santander - absolutely appalling!!! Enough said........

KingL

MSE_Lee wrote: »

Poll Started 03 Aug 2010:

Which is the worst customer service bank?

With the launch of Metro bank promising top customer service – how do you rate your bank.
Find your bank – then rate it (you can only choose one)

A. Barclays – Great
B. Barclays – OK
C. Barclays – Poor
D. HSBC - Great
E. HSBC - OK
F. HSBC - Poor
G. Nationwide - Great
H. Nationwide - OK
I. Nationwide - Poor
J. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - Great
K. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - OK
L. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - Poor
M. Natwest/RBS - Great
N. Natwest/RBS - OK
O. Natwest/RBS - Poor
P. Co-op - Great
Q. Co-op - OK
R. Co-op - Poor
S. First Direct - Great
T. First Direct - OK
U. First Direct - Poor
V. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - Great
W. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - OK
X. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - Poor
Y. Lloyds TSB - Great
Z. Lloyds TSB - OK
Z2. Lloyds TSB - Poor

Please vote here, or click ‘post reply’ to discuss below. Thanks

A. Barclays – Great
B. Barclays – OK
C. Barclays – Poor
D. Co-op - Great
E. Co-op - OK
F. Co-op - Poor
G. First Direct - Great
H. First Direct - OK
I. First Direct - Poor
J. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - Great
K. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - OK
L. Halifax/Bank of Scotland - Poor
M. HSBC - Great
N. HSBC - OK
O. HSBC - Poor
P. Lloyds TSB - Great
Q. Lloyds TSB - OK
R. Lloyds TSB - Poor
S. Nationwide - Great
T. Nationwide - OK
U. Nationwide - Poor
V. Natwest/RBS - Great
W. Natwest/RBS - OK
X. Natwest/RBS - Poor
Y. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - Great
Z. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - OK
Z2. Santander/Alliance & Leicester - Poor

err, you know that the list in the forum post is different from the list on the main site, yes? If people pick their letter from the forum post and just enter that letter when they get to the main site, the results'll be all over the shop !!

John_Pierpoint

You can check the ombudsman's statistics - they make interesting reading BUT they don't publish statistics of how many current accounts and business accounts each banking chain has - so it is difficult to rate the banks in a table of complaints per customer.

I started life 50 years ago with an Abbey National savings account (pay was a brown envelope with holes punched in it and the corner cut off so the payee could count the contents without tearing open the envelope). Queues regularly out of the door at busy times.
When I got promoted to a white collar job I needed a bank account.
I then got a Midland (HSBC) basic bank account (cost 6d per cheque that is about 30p in current values) but I worked out that Britain then had one of the best banking systems in the world; new fangled bank giro system that allowed one to write a cheque to "cash" and pay the monthly bills - gas electric mortgage insurance savings .............and keep the change from the 100 GBP cheque as spending money.
I upgraded to Barclays - my dad's bank - no serious problems: Odd mis-postings and clerical errors. I used an uncrossed cheque book thus being able to issue proper bills of exchange - went to Turkey circa 1970 and paid with cheques that wandered about in the Middle East before getting back to London about Christmas time.:beer:
Had a pantomime transferring branches because there is a Whitechapel high street and a Whitechapel high road, both with (then) Barclays banks.

My branch closed so I moved my account to TSB - partly because of a rumour about "privatisation" - a competent bank with a state of the art on-line linkages between branches.

TSB got taken over by Lloyds and my branch got "rationalised"; meanwhile I had a new job in "Docklands" - There was a Nat West but the nearest institution was the local Post Office - so I could operate a monthly settlement system via the PO using A & L, who had bought the National Giro from the government.
[Anyway they were prepared to give me 50 quid in a mixture of cash and free wine vouchers for switching:rotfl:]
A&L are a bit Mickey Mouse but they had a state of the art telephone banking system 20 (?) years ago and that developed into a pretty good on-line banking system about 10 (?) years ago.

[Perhaps A & L 's security is not as good as it might be, thank heavens, as I arranged for my octogenarian mother (for whom I held power of attorney, but did not use it) to open an account. When she became incapable of tottering along to the local branch she became probably the oldest silver surfer on their system;)]

I do have a Nationwide account as back up but in this era of "compulsory" direct debits; my everyday transactions are all with A&L/Santander - so it is looking like trouble ahead???
A & L's system is going to be junked in favour of some ghastly Abbey offering? Perhaps an insider could let us know what is really happening?
Re-arrange the following into a well know phrase or saying: Outwith baby bath water the throw .

(Why is it that these boards of directors take over these rival banks without doing due diligence, on how they intend to merge the two systems? How many years did it take for Barclays to restructure the Woolwich (former building society)?

Come to think of it & judging by the total chaos at Gatwick one snowy spring morning a couple of years or so ago, Spanish bosses and English managers don't seem to be able to deliver the goods.

When "uncle" Joe Stalin chased the Germans out of Eastern Europen, he had plans in place to install replacement governments and re-align the railways to Russian standards.

A few more thoughts on "bank" experiences here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/35147349#Comment_35147349


Post #111

golddustmedia

Nice to see I'm not the only one to suffer from Abbey / Santander!

I've posted before at my dismay when I attempted to close an account when I moved.

I withdrew cash from the hole in the wall until the account lay doing nothing with £1.34 in it for months. When we moved it was time to close the account as part of tidying up loose ends.

Except that the "new and improved" branches don't have cashiers with actual cash! They have cash machines and customer service (sales) desks.

Obviously the cash machine cannot dispense £1.34 so we were told the ONLY way to close the account was to be issued a cashiers cheque for the balance and then the account would be closed with a zero balance.

Sounds easy enough... until 6 months later statements catch us up at the new address showing the account is overdrawn. Unauthorised overdrawn, and the charges have been accruing for months!

Turns out the reason for being overdrawn was a £3 CHARGE to issue the cashiers cheque for £1.34!!! That's right, to close my account they issued a charge of more than double the balance!

It took MONTHS of writing to them pointing out the mistake, then they'd correct it but take so long to do so that the next month the interest on the overdrawn amount would put the account a few pennies overdrawn and trigger another charge!

Finally I threatened to collate all the letters and send the case to a newspaper of my choice as well as the financial ombudsman, suddenly the problem went away! :rotfl:

Kamen_Rider_W

I'm 19 years old and I've only had the one bank, which is Halifax. It's not great - for starters, if you have the basic account, they won't give you any service in the branch at all. You can make deposits or cash a cheque in the branch but you're expected to do everything else over the phone, and if you forget your security questions they expect you to go in with photographic ID, which is a pain in the backside for me because I've got no passport or driving license. When I phone them I usually get staff with Scottish/Irish-sounding accents, so I don't think they're outsourced (unless they trained some Indian people to put on these accents so no one would know the call centre's in Bangalore ...) They also keep pressuring you to upgrade your account (and pay in more every month), use their online banking system even if you don't want to, and when you log in to online banking you have to read through a plug for their mortgages every single time.

Judging by the rest of this thread though, they seem like the best of a bad bunch ...