Avoid evil santander!!!

coopstar23

DO NOT BANK WITH SANTANDER!

Just wanted to share my awful experience of switching to Alliance Leicester (now Santander), so hopefully no-one else will suffer.

I was tempted by the £100 to switch accounts, and their switching team assured me they would handle moving all my standing orders and direct debits. Great. After they'd done the switch I received a letter to say it'd had all be done. Great.

So imagine my surprise when my mortgage provider called me to ask why I hadn't paid my mortgage that month and demanded immediate payment. Fortunately they had seen the same thing happen with their other customers switching to Santander and were kind enough to let me pay over the phone and not mark it as a missed payment and therefore seriously affecting my credit rating. Thanks to Santander I almost defaulted on a mortgage payment for the first time ever.

That was not my first problem with Santander.

When the balance of my store card (£5.31) provided by Santander did not get paid (my fault), Santander called my house twice a day for a week, aggressively chasing the money, even after I'd sent a cheque after the first call. I also received 3 very strongly worded letters from them chasing money I'd already paid.

And a second issue arose today. I called Santander to activate my credit card, and after passing through security questions my card was activated. So I asked about balance transfers (being a Money Saver!) and the lady connected me to her colleague where I was asked exactly the same security questions (a bit OTT but I went with it), to which I failed to pass. Bizarre, seeing as I had just passed security moments earlier. My only option I was told, was to waste my precious lunch break and go to a branch to prove my identity. Hmm, telephone banking not all it's promised to be. It seems if their operator can't understand a northern accent then you fail security and you have to waste time queueing up in a branch (great! I love wasting my lunch hour in the bank).

And more, my colleague has a Santander account, he's been fighting with them since last week because they took 3 loan repayments from his account by mistake, leaving him skint this month. Santander were at fault but "couldn't help", and the loan company accept overpayments but won't repay them if made in error. So now my colleague is penniless til payday because of an error by Santander.

DO NOT BANK WITH SANTANDER!

lottoshare

Santander is a rubbish bank with the rudest and most arrogant customer service staff I have ever come across. They are apt to block your internet account for spurious "security" reasons and then you have to fight like the devil to get your account back. And all the while they act like THEY'RE doing YOU a favour by letting you bank with them. Avoid.