Halifax lack of customer service

simpywimpy

Hubby has a card with Halifax which I pay religiously because he works away for weeks at a time.

For the past few weeks, Halifax have been calling at home asking for him but won't leave a message.

Last saturday I open a letter for him from Halifax saying we are overdue a payment and to phone their collections dept asap. I contact him abroad and get him to do this. Turns out, we have missed the payment for the July statement due early August. This was the first and only letter from halifax about the matter.

I had definately not received this statement though they assure me they sent it so we pay over the phone. Then I get to thinking when is the next one due so get hubby to call again and it was due in 4 days - again we had not received any statement from them. Now one I can understand going missing but two in a row?

They said they would send out copies which have arrived today but in the meantime I called them and again paid over the phone.

I noticed on the latest statement though that the estimated interest has gone from 14 to 34 pounds so loss of reduced rate because of this.

My gripe is that on one of the 6-8 occasions that halifax called, could they not have left a message with their number saying that hubby should call them urgently? I just presumed it was a sales call.

We had the same problem with them 20 months ago when a statement didnt arrive and a payment was missed but have had this card for years without problems.

Now we have our first late payment strike on our credit report (well his) just when we are in the throws of applying for a mortgage!!

stephane_2

Why did you not set up a direct debit in the first place then you would not have this situation....

YorkshireBoy

The statement arrives at roughly the same date each and every month (and has been doing so for "years"). When 1, 2 or 3 weeks have passed the alarm bells should be ringing. If you're too busy ("I have a life" is often offered as an excuse on here), or not organised enough to manage situations such as these, then DD, as suggested above, is the way to go.

Can husband not provide them with a mobile phone number, then Halifax (and any of his other creditors) can contact him directly...and swiftly?

Can you get him to enrol for online access to the account?

Have you raised your concerns with the local sorting office (possibly not relevant though if it's only Halifax mail you're not receiving)?

PanchoJones

Just a few of things...

Firstly DD is obviously the way to go.

It is your (well your husbands) responsibility to keep a track of the account and if there is money borrowed on the card then a minimum payment has to be paid once a month, if you've had the card for a while you should know when about this is due.

Statements are not compulsory and in accordance with the FSA Halifax only have to send you one statement per year, they send monthly statements as a courtesy to try and help you keep up to date with what's been going on, you should never rely on statements or class them as a "bill" and keep a close monitor of your account using different facilities available to you, e.g - online banking, telephone banking. Also on another note if Royal Mail worked at a near perfect 99.9% rate and had a 0.01% margin of error they would still lose 30,000 letters per month so there could still be a high possibility that 2 letters could be misplaced in a row as I highly doubt that they meet a 99.9% rate.

Halifax have been attempting to get in touch with you by telephone and as far as I know will always state which department they are calling from and leave a contact number with third parties or on an answer machine, obviously they can't do much more than this due to data protection.

Finally, the T&C's state that a late payment or over-limit will cause any promotional rate to be removed from the card, however I'm sure if you call CS then they will re-instate it if you explain that there was no statement received.

Hoo Roo