MSE News: Santander says 'sorry' for customer service chaos

I_luv_cats

My local Santander branch has done away with a customer service / enquiry point so therefore all enquiries hold up the cashiers and queues are out of the door!!

Their complaints procedure is so slow. The website gives false promises on complaint resolution timescales.

I don't have much confidence in them!!

GraceCourt

Re the previous post, I forgot to mention that I have also had a Santander (Alliance & Leicester) current account for over five years... so the money-laundering that they think we are up to must have been going on for long enough for someone to catch us by now!

And more incompetence... last year they invited me to apply for their credit card... "apply online for an instant decision!" So I applied online... no instant decision as promised, just a screen saying that I would receive a decision as soon as possible. Over two weeks later, I rang to ask what was happening... they had no record of my application... duh! I applied online again, and a week later I received an actual paper letter ("online instant decision"???) with the details pre-printed for me to sign and send back in a reply-paid envelope. This was getting silly, but I did it. Another two weeks passed, and an envelope arrived... my new Santander Credit card?

No! It was a letter stating that that the account had been opened, but in order to prevent money-laundering, I would have to send them copies of my ID documents, authenticated by a solicitor or similar! Where have we heard that before? Don't forget the A&L current account with the identical nominal details held for over five years!!

Guess what I did? I applied online for an Amazon Visa card... I got it opened for Amazon purchases (with a £15 voucher off Amazon purchases as a freebie... thanks!) within 10 minutes of applying online... and SIX WORKING DAYS LATER the actual Visa card arrived in the post!

The post-script to this story... a week after the Amazon Visa card arrived, I got another (paper) letter from Santander... unless I returned the ID documents requested, or took them to a Santander branch, they wouldn't issue me with a credit card, and if I didn't respond, they'd discontinue my application...

I was so upset... how could I live without the fruits of their "instant online decision" that had taken nearly two months and gone precisely nowhere... :rotfl:

PS - If anyone wonders why we haven't gone elsewhere, they haven't been reading MSE recommendations for current accounts and savings products... Santander might have Stone Age IT systems, broken e-mail systems, and completely unresponsive Customer Services staff, but we are determined to get the best return on our savings in the long run...

Degenerate

What I don't get is how they're apologising for the last few months as if the previous six years were a-ok.

vix2000

Their incompetent switching service nearly lost me my 2.9% life of balance on my halifax credit card, their high charges have cost me more than the £100 I got for switching. I thought Halifax was bad but I am slowly moving my dds and so's back so that I can close this dreadful account. I also never got my "guaranteed" credit card despite a v good credit history and being able to get other cards. In my branch whatever your query 'they don't deal with that in branch' and point you to a phone. Every time I go in there's someone on the aforementioned phone ranting and raving in exasperation.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

I've not had big problems with Santander - just a string of minor niggles.
However, the thing that seriously pees me off is that they withdrew the facility for their business customers to see the reference numbers for incoming BACS payments. NOTE: They withdrew it. It used to exist but stopped overnight. Without warning.
So, rather than being left to guess which customer a payment came from, I now receive all the BACS payments into an account of another bank. I still deposit cash and cheques with Santander though because I live a short walk from a branch and can make such deposits 24/7 at the ATM. With my other account, it would involve queuing up at a post office.
So I need two bank accounts for one business because Santander's IT and communications are both seriously flawed.
At the moment I get about £400 - £600 a month in BACS payments that Santander would be getting. This will increase vastly as cheque abolition day grows nearer. Eventually I see Santander only getting my cash payments. It works out OK now because the money going into the other account is just left there (if possible) to pay my half yearly tax bills.
NOTE TO MSE: Are Santander aware of this (and other) threads? It would be good business for Santander to get someone from a fair way up the food chain to come on here and troubleshoot these problems. It would be great customer service to have someone on here dealing with these queries. If they really want to show that they intend to change their customer services for the better, coming on here would be a good start. It would mean so much more than meaningless platitudes on Watchdog (who I felt were overly lenient with Santander).
So come on Santander.
You say you want to change.
Show that you mean it.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

GraceCourt wrote: »

Where do I start with the problems we have had with Santander?




Oh, did I mention that this situation has been made more complicated by the fact that we cannot receive e-mails from them because their mail servers are improperly configured? Without getting too technical, their SMTP mail servers are sending mail from non-existent accounts, so our SMTP mail server rejects it as spam - unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (the vast majority of spam is sent from non-existent addresses). We have even sent them copies of server logs together with detailed explanations of the problem and the requirements of RFC2822 - the technical standard set by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for internet e-mail, but so far they've ignored these.

A bank that has an IT system that is so inept that it can't release its database field to show the reference numbers for incoming BACS payments hasn't got a chance of putting right the stuff you mention.
I sometimes wonder if the IT manager is running the whole system from a Commodore 64 (that's too generous - maybe a VIC-20).

They may be saying sorry but as far as I'm concerned, it's not enough. They made my business unnecessarily difficult to run for a while (until I found workarounds with other banks) and if I had had a lot more customers paying by BACS when they removed the view of the reference field, it could have sent me under. It really could have been that serious.
No, sorry is not enough.
I want the top dog of Santander to allow himself to be tied to a stake in the street and tarred and feathered (it's OK, I'm just laughing at myself - really)

N9eav

I was thinking of switching banks.... Maybe not Santander

surfsister

me too i've lost access to my accounts since july and nobody is interested!! i'm changing to nat west only to get at my cash as i cannot access anything. In branch santander even had the cheek to tell me to go to the alliance branch as nothing to do with them! lol! this was after a 30 minute ait, their was anarchy in that branch!!

womblekelly

Santander also manage Asda credit cards and at the moment we're stuck as can't get online access to our account because they've cancelled our card (due to expire end Oct) and we're still waiting for new cards even though they were promised asap. Other half managed to get a 50p credit to the card as all telephone calls to their customer service dept cost 10p/minute. Credit card statement due to be paid soon but we're stuck as we can't access statement to check all transactions OK. I should point out that husband used card to buy fuel yesterday and transaction went through without any problem.
Found out about this as a direct debit to PC World was refused, hence a letter from them and when we phoned them about this and to change to direct debit to another card they said this was not an isolated incident and they'd had lots of people with Santander cards with the same issue.
Needless to say we'll be cancelling the card asap.

bowjest

mickbell wrote: »

Here's a tip to possibly get some money back from Santander.

I phoned to make a complaint about a payment being refused when I used my card.
The answers I received were unsatisfactory, so I rang back a few days later, complained again and told them that I was not happy with their response. I asked to escalate the issue to the next level and have it registered as a formal complaint.
The response was that if I did not insist on making it a formal complaint, Santander would pay me £50 instead.
I accepted this and sure enough £50 was paid into my current account.

RESULT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

same happened to me, though they paid me 70 quid, but...i ended up with 7 new electron cards 12 pin numbers but no idea as to which pin went with which card And they have now cancelled all the cards and sent me a instasnt plys account card with a anual fee of £120 which i especialy asked them not to do, and anotherr 5 pin numbers none of which work on the instant plus account!!!!
i have to go into a branch to gert any money plus as i dont have bt line all calls are on my mobile and i have a bill of £130 just from phoneing them, their customer complants dept refused to register my complaint about the phone bill saying they have delt with me. im going to keep my money in a old shoe box under my bed from now on, at least i can access it when i need it !