Bye Bye Santander!

simrgrs

Party_Animal - good on you! Hope it works out with Brittania

SpudGunner

babs98 wrote: »

I opened an ISA with Halifax. During the opening process on the telephone I explained why I was moving my ISA from Santander and got sympathetic comments from the Halifax staff member and was persuaded to open a Reward current account too. Big mistake. Halifax are just as bad as Santander. Now trying to close accounts but proving difficult because the Halifax branch system doesn't communicate with their online system - now where have I heard that before? Staff smile and say everything is fine but it isn't! Going in to Barclays tomorrow to transfer ISA, at least they employ people who have a slight idea about how banks should work.

Just be aware that ISA transfers for money invested already can only be done on a cash isa account which pays only 0.1%.

A brand new Golden Isa 3 can be opened if you have not put any money into an isa in this tax year and will pay 3.25% but will of course be using this years tax allowance.

Hope your visit goes well to Barclays. Thanks for your compliment about us having a "slight" idea about how banks should work!

BurntOut

I stopped using my old A&L acc around Jul/Aug 2010 and tranfered all my money to another bank but left about £12 in the A&L Premier Direct Account, now Santanders. I transfered my salary also.

I logged on today as a company had refunded a payment into this old acc as I had paid for it with the card some time ago.

So tonight I thought ok I will check to see if the refund has gone in and tfx the whole lot away from Santander.

Get this, I logged in only to notice that since Feb of this year £5 UNFUNDED CHARGES had been taken out of my acc, and when they took this out on April I became overdrawn by £2.13 and I havent even an overdraft with them (as I never take them, I dont like them) and have never been overdrawn in my life, so I had an UNARRANGED OVERDRAFT CHARGE of £55 and a further £5 UNFUNDED CHARGE to come of around May 3rd.

So straight on the phone, to be told because I wasnt funding the acc with £500 I incurred the charges, I was like hold on I havent been using the acc since Jul 2010. And the reply I got was, 'yea our systems where updated and the old system hadnt been picking the charges up'.

Needless to say I wasnt paying no Unarranged OD charge and got that taken off. I was never advised about any of these charges happening, you;d think they would of sent me a letter to say it was happening. But anyway I asked the guy to close the acc and he came of with eh I cant until the £5 charge comes off on May 3rd. I retorted I am a customer requesting my account be closed, there is now £37 pound in the acc, take the £5 and close it now. He said I'll put your request in for that then and acc will be closed and chq forwarded for the balance.

Apparently they could not do it electronically ????
Anyone else had this, or can they and he just couldnt be bothered???

Never had a prob with A&L, looks like I got my money out on time than leaving it with this Santander lot:mad::mad::mad:

Cmdr_Bond

What can I say? *points to signature*

At least we managed to fleece them for £700.00 between us.

scott_lithgows

Makes me smile when I think about closing abbey/santander accounts.Think i,ll apply for one of their credit cards then close it without ever using it.The cost of producing the card and postage would be all theirs.:)

Cmdr_Bond

Unless you end up with someone else's debt!!!

tommy8721

Unfortunately all the banks offer the same level of poor service - just waiting for the posts about Natwest in about 6 months!!!

Party_Animal

Done, changed over at lunch time. I'll give Brittannia a go. They may not be any better but we'll see. They can't be any worse!

ses6jwg

BurntOut wrote: »

I stopped using my old A&L acc around Jul/Aug 2010 and tranfered all my money to another bank but left about £12 in the A&L Premier Direct Account, now Santanders. I transfered my salary also.

I logged on today as a company had refunded a payment into this old acc as I had paid for it with the card some time ago.

So tonight I thought ok I will check to see if the refund has gone in and tfx the whole lot away from Santander.

Get this, I logged in only to notice that since Feb of this year £5 UNFUNDED CHARGES had been taken out of my acc, and when they took this out on April I became overdrawn by £2.13 and I havent even an overdraft with them (as I never take them, I dont like them) and have never been overdrawn in my life, so I had an UNARRANGED OVERDRAFT CHARGE of £55 and a further £5 UNFUNDED CHARGE to come of around May 3rd.

So straight on the phone, to be told because I wasnt funding the acc with £500 I incurred the charges, I was like hold on I havent been using the acc since Jul 2010. And the reply I got was, 'yea our systems where updated and the old system hadnt been picking the charges up'.

Needless to say I wasnt paying no Unarranged OD charge and got that taken off. I was never advised about any of these charges happening, you;d think they would of sent me a letter to say it was happening. But anyway I asked the guy to close the acc and he came of with eh I cant until the £5 charge comes off on May 3rd. I retorted I am a customer requesting my account be closed, there is now £37 pound in the acc, take the £5 and close it now. He said I'll put your request in for that then and acc will be closed and chq forwarded for the balance.

Apparently they could not do it electronically ????
Anyone else had this, or can they and he just couldnt be bothered???

Never had a prob with A&L, looks like I got my money out on time than leaving it with this Santander lot:mad::mad::mad:

The underfunding fee of £5 was in the terms and conditions of the Premier Direct account long before Santander came along so fail to see how it is their fault.

The underfunding fees were waived for the first 6 months of migration whilst the accounts were moved to a new system.

madz1985

Venusflytrap wrote: »

Hi babs98, can you pls elaborate on the root cause of your discontent with Halifax? My hubby and I recently opened a rewards joint acct to benefit from the £5 credit but have found one flaw in the system - it appears that Halifax standing orders over £1000 can take up to 3 working days to clear instead of around 2 hours by faster payments as most banks do. This meant that our rent for last month was 3 days late; luckily our landlady of 4 years was accommodating... We are still unsure whether Halifax supports FPs or not.

Are there any more 'surprises' we should be aware of.

HBOS do support the Faster Payment System, not all payments are guaranteed to go down this route though and can take up to 3 bank working days, this is the same with ALL banks that have signed up to FPS.
If you recently opened it I'm guessing it was the first time the payment was made - which does take up to 3 working days, and then the following payment would go straight away, reason being the first payment would be set up as a bill payment, and then when it re-occurs it's classed as a standing order and can go by FPS - this is usually if it's set up online. If you set it up over the phone the agent should have set the details up, and then gone back in and sent the payment and it should have gone FPS, but sounds like maybe they set it up and sent payment at same time (bill payment).

Hope this helps.