WARNING: Santander / Alliance & Leicester International Transfer Fees ripoff

TheTipper

On the A&L / Santander web site it claims that you can do an international money transfer for a "Low fixed fee of £16 for foreign currency payments".

(If you want the URL you'll need to piece it together from these bits, since the system won't let me post a link in case I'm a spammer. www and .alliance-leicester.co.uk and /SiteInfo/ and international-payments. and aspx )

I just called the number on that page to make such a payment (in $AU), but was told the charge was £25.

On quoting the website charge of £16, I was told "that's pre-Santander"; untrue, since the webpage uses Santander's red livery rather than the A&L orange for highlights & bulletpoints, has both an A&L AND a Santander logo, and a huge banner proclaiming that "Alliance & Leicester is part of Santander".

I was still charged £25, and now have to write in to complain and reclaim my £9. Goodness knows how long that'll take.

However, I thought I'd warn you guys know so that you can avoid this ripoff, maybe use someone else if you can.

Cheers!

T

dzug1

TheTipper wrote: »

However, I thought I'd warn you guys know so that you can avoid this ripoff, maybe use someone else if you can.

Cheers!

T

Good info - but most (I know not all) banks charge at least £25 so you may be kind of stuck

unbelievable

A Japanese friend of mind just attempted to transfer money from the sale of a property from the UK to Japan in Pounds (no conversion fee/exchange rate) from Alliance & Leicester to the Japanese Post Office bank.

For some reason we cannot find out yet. The transfer did not go through and on top of the £25 fee ... more than £1,400 was removed from her account.

No one in the Alliance & Leicester can tell her why this has happened or what it is for, except that to tell her that she was warned that 3rd parties might remove fees and this was beyond A&L's control

£1,400 is not a fee. It is an incredible robbery. It bears no resemblance to any real cost of what is, after all, a couple of clicks on a computer.

Unfortunately, although my friend speak good English, she is almost completely unable to understand the thick Liverpool accents of the Bootle customer service department and because I am in the UK, we are unable to get past the usual "insecurity" to allow me to handle her enquiry for her. They say they cannot offer anyone who speaks a more neutral accent ... despite her have been royally ••••• over without warning by them.

Has anyone had any experience of such a situation?
What would be the legalities of it?

I would have thought her legal relationship was with A&L and they would be bound to reasonable charges, or warnings of such charges.

At present they cannot even tell us who, what or why the money was taken!

Oh, and joy or joys, they want to be paid £50 in advance to investigate what has happened.

Presumably, if we attempt the transfer again, we risk the crap shoot of losing a similar sum again!?!

Have A&L been bought out by a bunch of Nigerians scammer, or something? I am disgusted by their customer service.

What I don't understand is that Santander also see to operate a cheap 'www internationalpayments co.uk' service and if so, why did they not recommend to use that rather than sending off to be mugged?

There is a chance that there is an intermediary bank involved, my guess it is Mitsui Sumitomo, which leaves us lost as who and where to complain to. But A&L just want us to ••• off and stop bother them. Their attitude is nothing more than a tough luck and they can give us no more information than to say, "well it could be that much".

Yes ... but for what and why!??!

It is unbelievable. It is faceless piracy via the internet.

unbelievable

The cost ... fee ... charge ... theft rate appears to be 4%.

£1,400 charge for having a transfer refused.

I could have flown over there business class myself, with a bag of £20 notes cheaper.

WHY IN THIS DAY AND AGE!?!

WHO THE HELL DO THESE CROOKS THINK THEY ARE?

The answer is simple I think ... untouchable and invisible and protected by an army of clueless, careless, amoral customer service telephonists.

jennifernil

Halifax offer a transfer for £9.50 via internet banking, the larger the amount the better the exchange rate, but I bet they do not offer that great a rate overall.

I would use a specialist service in future.

unbelievable

This is an update, the telephone assistant admitted that Santander are having problems making transfers to Post Office banks all over the world since Santander took over A&L, Abbey etc.

Of course, they did not warn us. They made the transfer without knowing if it would work or not expecting to pass the buck, and loss on exchange rates, to us.

Definite warning.

James129

Halifax charge the least amount £9.50 to send money abroad compared to other banks like Natwest.

However, their exchange rates are appaling. I transfered £1000 pounds to canadian account and the exchange rate Halifax gave me was 1.5, whilst standard exhchange rate on that particular day was 1.564.


So bank actually made $56 out of the transfer along with the fee.

Mikhail

ashleyingle wrote: »

Hello Unbelievable, answered your question on
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/45273562#Comment_45273562

The bank transfer is only a small thing to worry about - you should worry more about the hidden fee, especially on transfers above £5000 - the terrible exchange rates banks offer.

Therefore for the average joe - the bank will profit 5% of the amount plus the transfer fee as mentioned before in the thread (it costs the bank pennies). Due to this reason, many brokers including myself are around provide a currency service which have saved literally '000's for clients for years!

And how do you save "000's" to you clients if I may ask? In my experience most brokers indeed have all services 'for free' basically because they include all their fees and commissions in the exchange rate. The best example is hifx.com those crooks have one exchange rate on the front page of their website and QUITE different after registration.

mearnsy

I have also been suckered by this and can't believe how naive I was and wish I had checked here first. I am with the Cooperative who are normally ok on most things, the issue I think is the advice you get via the contact centre. I set up a payment to an Italian bank- a structured payment is £8..so you think "great", what they don't advise you is they have their own cosy little arrangement on exchange rates which means you get stung- the standard rate at point of transaction was £1- €1.13 but they charged €1.11..sounds like nothing but it adds up when the transactions go into the 1000's...very annoyed about this and the lack of clarity and advice. The other interesting thing is they read you a script about how (due to reasons of national security etc) that the details of the transaction will be passed to big brother and his european/global agencies so whilst you are looking over your shoulder wondering who's looking and what data they store, the bank has their hand in your pocket in taking hard earnt money! Use a broker is my hindsight driven advice or by the looks of it the post office offer a fee free service (not sure what the caveats are).

unbelievable

Months later ... a whole heap of complaining ... we finally got our £1,400 back.

The sick bit was that initially, the customer disservice monkeys wanted £50 to investigate why it disappeared. We did not give them a penny ... now we empty the account and got out of them so they lost a customer.

droow

One word. Bitcoin