Santander - Major C***-up - Poor service.

DrSyn

Dear Cmdr Bond

I wished you luck at the start of this saga and I still do.

I am now begining to wonder if they are either:

(a) Trying to wear you down, so you will just go away with nothing.
or
(b) Are using you as an example on "how not to treat good customers"!

I would have been in touch with their chief exec., by now. You are very understanding of them.

Cmdr_Bond

DrSyn wrote: »

Dear Cmdr Bond

I wished you luck at the start of this saga and I still do.

I am now begining to wonder if they are either:

(a) Trying to wear you down, so you will just go away with nothing.
or
(b) Are using you as an example on "how not to treat good customers"!

I would have been in touch with their chief exec., by now. You are very understanding of them.

Possibly B, however the complaints resolver we have been speaking with does seem genuine, and I do believe the fault lies with the IT department over which he has no immediate control...

as for A, I would have agreed with you, except:

• They offered £150
• We were umming and arring over the offer until the debit card issue arose
• We then asked for £300
• They came back and said they were willing to pay £300
• We provisionally accepted the £300, provided the debit cards were sorted in a reasonable time frame
• They HAVE PAID us the £300, even though there are issues outstanding.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Cmdr_Bond

Link added to original post

Well, today (Wednesday, 16th March, 2011) I received another letter...

10 March 2011

Our Ref: DST #######

Dear Mr ####

Thank you for your telephone call of 2 March 2011 and for taking the time to speak with me on several occasions over the last week. A review of the issue you raised has taken place an I am now in a position to respond.

I understand your brother, Mr ##### ####, received an automated telephone call from our Fraud department and was asked to authorise transactions that had taken place on your account. Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused due to this matter.

We work hard to provide a level of service that is helpful to our customers and I am sorry this has not been you experience. Clearly, this does not reflect the professional image we intend to portray and it us obviously not the level of service you would expect to receive from Santander. Please be assured, your feedback has been passed to the management responsible, for the business area involved, so this matter can be addressed.

I can confirm the issue has resulted from further problems caused when your profile was merged with Mr ##### ####'s late last year. Please be assured a fix has been submitted through our I T department and the issue will be fully resolved shortly.

as discussed, in recognition of the inconvenience you have been caused I have arranged to credit your account with £300.00 as a gesture of goodwill. This is in full and final settlement of your complaint and I hope you will accept it with my best wishes.

I have investigated and answered all of the issues you have raised. If you believe my decision is incorrect and you wish to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service I have enclosed a leaflet that explains how you can do this. You should contact them within six months of the date of this letter, enclosing a copy of it, as they would need this for their investigation.

I'm sorry you felt the need to complain on this occasion but I'm confident that your future experiences with Santander will be positive.

Yours sincerely

#### #######
Complaints Resolver

I have highlighted a couple sentences in there, and a whole paragraph seems almost identical to a previous letter.

Now I am still talking with this guy, regards the issue. And I expect to hear from him tomorrow. But is this a letter of deadlock?

The problem I have is that when I accepted the payment, I did so with the provision that the error was fixed within a reasonable timeframe. This has not happened. Unfortunately, this is one of the few calls I did not record.

My opinion is that if it isn't solved by Friday, this letter gives me enough to go to the FOS and the Information Commissioner on Monday.



So, anyone have any recommendations on how I should prepare for this, and are there any templates for writing to the FOS and IC?

:beer:

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FLAPJACK

I had my first taste of Santander this week.....I am a customer by default,ex Abbey.

I had a call regarding my cash Isa which is due to mature (lose the bonus) on April 6th, would I like to come in and discuss the options?. So I turned up and was expecting to have a business card given to me, as happens as a matter of course when I have met with other firms advisers...that didn't happen, there was no questioning of my financial wishes regarding the ISA either.

All I got was a full on push to get me to transfer the money (still untaxable) into another product, I explained that for the time being I just want to keep things the way they are and infact I would like to give a cheque for next years allowance. Still I got a sales pitch for yet another product, I explained again all I want is to keep things as they are at the moment for reasons that I'm not prepared to go into with someone I have only just met.
At this point her voice was raised a notch telling me that she was trying to do the best for my money....at which point I replied in that case please take my cheque and leave things as they are, she then tapped on the keyboard and started showing me how well a different product had done and how well my money could do too. I was getting rather peeved at someone not taking any notice about what I wanted (good or bad) for my money.
I ended up just gathering up my papers and said obviously you don't want to help so lets just leave the ISA to drop into a 0.5% account on maturity and I'll arrange for it to be transferred elsewhere....she just shouted "I'm trying to help you and your money" I just upped and left the office.

I fully understand she was doing her job, but she hadn't enquired about what I wanted to do she automatically went into sales mode hard if she had bothered to get a financial picture of my situation she would have seen she was wasting her time.

I put in a complaint via and complaints page on Santanders website explaining what happened and as a result of being treated like this I shall be transferring the ISA out as well as a 75k bond I have with them on maturity, as i have never been subject to this type of thing with other advisers and it certainly wasn't what I expected from a large company like santander.

Withing 45 minutes I had a phone call from Santander complaints dept, I was told that this type of thing is not acceptable and fully agreed that it's my money and if I don't want to take up the advise (rightly or wrongly) thats my decision. It was said that this type of incident is a serious breech of Santanders code of conduct for advisers and told me that it is being taken as a serious official complaint.
They were sorry that I was taking my business elsewhere but could understand that what appears to be a case of pressurising and bullying has given a totally inaccurate picture of how Santander operate....thats for others to decide.

Anyhow as a gesture of goodwill a hamper arrived today.

So together with what I have read on MSE about other peoples experiences with Santander it seems, maybe they are getting too big too fast in my opinion.

Cmdr_Bond

It's been a while and NO, its not sorted yet.

Here is the potted history of the last couple of weeks.

On Friday, 18th March, 2011, I called our complaints resolver. Shock horror, nothing the outstanding issue had still yet to be fixed.

He told me the the complaint was being "upscaled" and that I would here from a colleague in his office, who would be taking over the case (and that he would personally explain neverything that had gone before to this person).

By the following Wednesday (22nd March, 2011), I still had not heard anything, so I called again. Only to find that whilst the complaint had been upscaled, it had not been taken up. He put me on hold while he went and fouind a colleague, then confirmed that the complaint was being taken over now.

I then requested in writing, confirmation of this and also confirmation in writing that the £300 was not "full and final".

On Friday, 25th March, 2011, I received that letter:

24 March 2011

Our Ref: DST #######

Dear Mr ##########

Thank you for your telephone call today.

As discussed, I can confirm your complaint has been passed to one of my colleagues to investigate. They should be contacting you directly within the next few days.

I can also confirm that when we discussed the resolution of your complaint you agreed that whilst you accepted the £300.00 goodwill gesture this was on the understanding that the issue was resolved.

If you remain unhappy when you have received our response and do not feel we have resolved your complaint to your satisfaction you may also be entitled to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. More information about escalating your complaint will be provided with our resolution letter.

Yours sincerely

#### #######
Complaints Resolver

Well, as of Wednesday, 30th March, 2011, I still had not heard from them, so I gave them another call and left a message on the voicemail.

I got a call back in a couple of hours from the colleague of the Complaints Resolver I had been speaking with. She apologised for the delay in contacting, claiming that she had been out of the office - but now has no annual leave left so it shouldn't happen again (I was a little sarcastic when she answered the phone - saying that I thought the department had died or something).

She also said that she thought she knew where the actual issue was, and how to get it resolved. So she took some details from me (calling me back several times as I kept losing reception) before confirming that yes, what she thought was the problem was indeed actually the problem.

I have 3 cards, and my wife 1 (2 on the joint plus my sole and my savings). It turns out that my card on the joint account and the cash card on the savings account are not linked to my credit profile (something I had already guessed) and that it should be a relatively minor fix. I replied that if it is such a simple fix, why has it not been done yet?

Anyway, she reckons she has all the info she needs, and will call me to let me know what has happened/is happening or not happening on Monday, whether it is resolved or not.

Place your bets.

Oh, and her job title? We have been promoted from a Complaints Resolver to a Customer Resolution Manager.

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jen245

God, the saga continues!! I cant believe its taking them so long to resolve your complaint!

DrSyn

I just had a new thought about your problem.

Why do you not write to BBC's "Money Box" program for some assistance. This could have two benifical results for you.

1. Your problem may be more quickly solved.

2. The BBC may want you to either write a series about this ongoing saga. Or sell them the rights to this comedy of errors. Either way you would come out on top.;)

Cmdr_Bond

Well, I am seriously thinking of taking it to the press, whether I get "satisfactory" compensation or not.

I would like to think I can raise it with the FOS and ICO too, but I don't know if they would only be interested if I was still unhappy with the outcome. As I already have £300, which is pretty near the top of the FOS scale for this type of complaint, I doubt they would do more in that respect - but I would like to bring Santander's incompetence to light officially.

As far as going to the press is concerned, I think Watchdog would be a good place to start. Don't know of any other consumer programs... but short of writing to all the papers - which would be the best to get the article printed in (if they deem it worthy) and which do you think would be the most interested in printing something like this?

DrSyn

1. I mentioned the BBC's Radio 4 " Money Box" instead of "Watchdog" for the following reason. Most of the year, their program cover articals to do with money. However during the summer its replacment, zeros in on one particular aspect of money. If they think your problem would be of interest to listeners they would devote the whole program to it.

2. If I where going to the press I would choose the Daily Mail. If you want to look at some of their financial articals go to:-

www.thisismoney.co.uk


3. By now I would most certainly have written a formal letter of complaint with all that had occuerd to the the Chief Exec., of Santander at the UK head office. I would have sent it recorded delivery so they could not claim they never received it.

Good Luck!

Cmdr_Bond

Link added to original post

Well, I am currently trying to work out if this is their attempt at an April fool, received this letter in the post this morning (Saturday, 2nd April, 2011)

01 April 2011

Dear Mr # ##########

Thank you for contacting us following our recent letter. I am sorry to hear that we have not yet been able to resolve your concerns.

We will independently review our previous decision, along with any new points you have raised. We will then contact you shortly to discuss our outcome.

When contacting us either by telephone or letter please remember to advise us of your complaints reference number quoted above.

You may be entitle to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you do not feel we have resolved your complaint to your satisfaction. More information about escalating your complaint will be provided with our resolution letter.

Although I do not know what the outcome will be, I do hope that we will be able to find a solution that you are happy with.

Yours sincerely

###### #####
Head of Central Complaints Operations

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