MSE News: Santander 'worst bank for customer service'

SG_Guy

"goingforward", you should write in and ask for compensation/ gesture of goodwill. Although, as always since it's Santander, a health warning is required: I had to chase up on the complaint itself, since they never wrote back to acknowledge after the first time but got three-digit compensation in the end. So, always worth asking.

nzseries1

Since the disasterous migration of my accounts from A+L to Santander, I've decided to close my account there.

Today I tried to close my account for the fifth time - the first two I went into different branches, the next two I phoned and this time I've written a letter. Every time I've been told "yes sir, that will be actioned in the next five days".

An insider told me that Santander operates something called The Great Santander Void of Doom where all requests end up going, never to be seen by human eyes.

Former_MSE_Guy

questionabout wrote: »

What I do feel is wrong in light of this Survey, is Martin has still rated the company top No.1 Winner of the Best Bank Account on Rate. Sure the £100 switch may be good and in-credit rate, but I think that a HUGE WARNING should be put on the Best Account Table TODAY for anyone who doesn't read the forums.

Thanks for the feedback. In light of the poll results, we've put a note in the bank accounts guide where Santander is mentioned, saying that service is poor.

We're also discussing internally how we handle Santander mentions but this is a big job that requires graphics and structure changes, as well as changing our editorial line. We will have all the changes ready for next week's weekly email.

Also, note Martin's quote in the news story, where we state the poll was conducted to quantify the negative feedback we've been getting over recent weeks.

To emphasise this is on our agenda, in that quote, he says: "[FONT=&quot]We'll be studying these results and working out how we best incorporate them in our Best Bank Accounts guide."[/FONT]

mycroftmill

On 2/8/10 my wife and I closed our Online saver 5 as the % rate had dropped and reinvested it in an esaver.

After 2days the capital was reinvested but not the interest.

A&L have since said that Santander no longer transfer interest prefering to send out a cheque.

Today we found out why, my wifes cheque won't be with us until 17th August. My interest has not, as yet been calculated.

A&L/Santander have an interest free loan for 3wks until this cheque clears. Multiply this by it's customer base and you can see how they became such a rich bank.

In the meantime they have transfered money from another of our accounts without being asked to.

They have also changed the payees Direct Debit account number of our credit card provider so that payment would not have been credited to our account.

Customer Services are either unable or unwilling to assist..........'Everything will be done in due course'

MoneySavingNovice

MSE_Guy wrote: »

...........we've put a note in the bank accounts guide where Santander is mentioned, saying that service is poor........

Big improvement, however it does seem a little unfair not to also mention First Directs great service along the same lines.

It least for me Great Service is a real Money Saving issue. How much does it cost to deal with poor service v great service? Difficult to quantify I agree and you could debate this forever, but this should still be a factored into any decision reference bank accounts.

Welshwoofs

I'm not surprised Santander have got such a poor rating. I've been an Abbey customer for 20 years and am now looking to move after terrible service by Santander.

The latest debacle (there are many!) was last week when I popped round to my local co-op to pick up some essentials. My £11 bag of shopping was declined which was fairly embarrassing as there was a queue of people behind me. I dashed the 5 minutes back home to get on the phone and discovered a fraud block had gone on the account due to me buying an item from Amazon. I was asked several questions about my security information and recent purchases and then told the block was removed and the card would be active in 1-2 minutes.

10 minutes later, back at co-op, my bag of shopping was rung through the tills a second time....only for my card to be declined. Another trip back home, another phone call and an assurance that this time the block was off. Back to co-op, third time through the tills and declined again. I waited by the tills and tried a fourth time. Declined. By this time I was absolutely burning with shame and getting very odd looks from the check-out people.

It transpired that the first two people I'd spoken to in their Indian call centre had done absolutely nothing on my account, nor had they asked me the right questions. They'd not even attempted to lift the block. This final person I spoke to was very apologetic but by that time I'd wasted over an hour of my time and had my card declined 4 times.

This is now the end of the run for me. Since moving to Santander I've had been the victim of several errors on their part and each time I've had to do all the leg-work, been shoved from pillar to post on the phone and rarely been apologised to.

huw01

Thankfully I do not have any personal accounts with Santander. I had the misfortune of having to deal with them over a Christmas Club I run. The account was held with the then Abbey National, it was a postal / telephone based account and offered cheque withdrawals by post. It worked fine for years until Santander took Abbey over.

Last Autumn we decided because the interest rate had nosedived to something abysmal that the account would be closed and that we would move provider to another institution. Trying to close the account was a battle in itself. After telephoning them, they insisted that the account could not be closed by post or over the phone but had to be closed in person at a branch.

I then went to my nearest branch which was about 20 miles away only to be told that they could not view the account as it was a postal / telephone account. So a wasted journey there, after a fair few more phone calls to the sub-continent I decided it was less hassle to leave it open and dormant than trying to close it.

I was in Chester a few weeks ago and decided to pop-in to see if anything could be done about the dormant account. I provided ID at the branch and eventually they closed the account - or I’ve been told it has been closed. They then tried to sell their current account with the £100 switching incentive. Well she was on a hiding to nothing, there is no chance I will ever bank with this organisation.

I’m an RBS Customer and my branch is one of those to be sold to Santander. As I’ve posted on other threads on this forum, I’m now in the process of moving to a Scottish Branch to avoid the sale.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever will I deal again with these cowboys. I’d love to see Martin take them to task on a Tonight special or Watchdog on the telly.:j

User_name_6

these results really show 3 distinct groups -

GOOD:
First Direct
Co-op

TERRIBLE:
Santander

INBETWEEN:
Everyone else

the gaps between the 2 "good" ones and anyone else - from 75% great to barely half that, is pretty massive.

really backs up the general consensus that a certain spanish bank are not the place to go if you want good service too :-)

izools

ses6jwg wrote: »

A lot of queuees in branches are down to a number of things:

1) New computer systems and staff learning them
2) ID requirements (this is because Abbey got a MAHOOSIVE fine for money laundering etc and now Santander are very cautious)
3) Complex servicing (things like registering deaths, removing blocks on cards) this takes time and can cause queues. Where possible branches will try to get Personal Bankers to do things like this but certain branches are limited on staff. It also does not help when you get people insisting on coming to the counter to withdraw £10 in cash with a card they could easily use in the ATM. This causes hold ups for customers with arguably more important/ urgent transactions and enquiries

Other banks handle this better and they are even allowed to do more in branch than you lot are.

I do feel sorry for you and wish you the best of luck finding a job with HSBC / First Direct as quickly as possible :beer:

izools

ses6jwg wrote: »

P.S. I would not feel sorry for me thankfully my branch is one of the good ones which has scored 95+ in every service assessment since the beginning of the year so a nice bonus for us.

Yeah fair enough but surely there's a stigma of working for what is widely accepted as one of the worst brands on the high street? And isn't it embarrassing to have to call the call center for the things you can't do in branch to be met with immense levels of sheer incompetence?

I wouldn't be able to hack it myself.