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

whaylock

I have closed all my accounts with Santander - I will not put my funds in the hands of an organisation that is so incompetent. They still owe me interest on two separate sums of money that I was unable to access. They told me that I had not tried to access my accounts on line and I must have typed in the wrong information. I only found out later from press reports that I wasn't alone and they were lying in their teeth.

They also told me that they no longer had an official complaints system to escalate my complaint and finally sent the money by CHAPS transfer. A week later they sent the money again by cheque. I would love to pay it in - just to see what happens but I would probably end up being charged by my bank for bouncing a cheque!!!

How dare they say that customers are unreasonable :mad:

Wendy

esallyhyde

:TI complained To Santander as was transferred across to them from A & L without discussion, so asked when I would receive the £100 that they are offering "new customers". As far as I am concerned, I AM a new customer to Santander. They wrote and said this was actually for brand new customers only (just like the TV advert) BUT did offer me £50 as a gesture of goodwill.:T

jaybeebaby

Has anyone else noticed SANTANDER's new get rich quicker scheme?

They're charging premium rate on calls to the new complaints line!!! Should be free eh guys??

stevomac

I opened an online savings account with Santander 3 months ago as its fixed rate was one of the best on the market at the time.I received a cash card and a pin number seperately within a reasonable amount of time but I am still waiting for details to operate the account online.I have phoned numerous times and am getting nowhere with these people.I gave up with the normal helpline number as I kept getting an Indian call centre (major irritation for a start!) and have phoned the complaints dept as well but still no joy.I keep being told the details will be reordered and I will receive them in 7-10 working days.The excuses are becoming more and more creative.Everything from the fact I requested no junk mail from them when I opened the account to the fact my address appears incorrectly formatted on their system and they may have been sending the letter out with no street number only a flat number.They fobbed me off with a tenner during the last call to appease me and another promise to send out the details.I won't hold my breath!

Ashfordblue

Just to confirm that even now they are still not completely honest, I can confirm that not all redundancies have been in "back office" areas, when they closed the A&L contact centre in Ashford on 30th June this year the staff let go were predominantly customer facing so this apology means nothing to me

davidgmmafan

esallyhyde wrote: »

:TI complained To Santander as was transferred across to them from A & L without discussion, so asked when I would receive the £100 that they are offering "new customers". As far as I am concerned, I AM a new customer to Santander. They wrote and said this was actually for brand new customers only (just like the TV advert) BUT did offer me £50 as a gesture of goodwill.:T

Hmm might give this a shot myself, when did this occur?

womblekelly

Well, new cards arrived today and once we got them activated (and they tried to sell identity theft protection insurance .... the new scam methinks), we were able to access account online BUT no Sep statement (which is the one which needs to be paid by 10th Oct) they are going to send out paper statement which will take 10-12 days - have you spotted the problem yet? We can see statements up to mid Aug and transactions from mid Sep.
A tel call (at 10p/minute) elicited the information that this was all due to a "computer problem"!!!
We do know what balance to pay now at least, wait with bated breath for statement!
Never, ever, ever again

sneds

My wife and I took out a mortgage with Abbey/Santander. We told them up front we would be likely to want to convert to buy-to-let once we found a suitable property as our main residence. Abbey said ok. A few weeks after the mortgage completed, we rang and said we wanted to convert to buy-to-let. Santander said ok, we'll send the necessary forms. Three weeks went buy. No forms. We phoned again. Santander says you can't switch to buy-to-let. We had no option but to re-mortgage and pay Santander a whopping big early redemption penalty. We've since moved our 2 isa's, savings account and current account, credit cards away. Won't ever touch a foreign bank again.

bitman

when living in the algarve years ago i had a banco santander bank account and credit cards for about 5 years with great service, never ever had any issues with them. had my own business and personal contact at the faro branch, just a phone call was enough to arrange things. years later when i came to the uk and noticed that abbey national became santander i was very happy. so i switched over to santander.

[rant]
everything i had with my banco santander i have NOT found it here in the UK and i tried a couple UK banks. but this UK santander... mama mia what a bunch of amatuers if you ask me. i feel really sorry for the people here in the UK and their banks as for me they all sucks!

anyway the move to the abbey / santander was and still is a nightmare. the last issue i have with them is that they stopped the dd i used to pay my santander home insurance? yes, they cannot process (found this out by spending many phone calls) dd from santander to santander. not sure in what time or how they are managing doing business but enough is enough for me.

i still hoop at some point that the UK (if i'm still around and i'm counting my days to leave) will switch over to the € zone so i can close all my UK accounts and move back to my 'old' and trushed dutch and spanish banks to do my bank business.

[/rant]

worldtraveller

IMHO any customer "service" phone system that goes through the "key" options available and then simply just cuts you off, before always finally allowing you to key an option to talk with a real person, is pointless & demeaning. I wouldn't open an account with them if they paid me!