Appalling service from Alliance & Leicester

fitorbust

Here is part of a letter I have just sent to the A&L - I am at the end of my tetherwith the online banking service. The people are fine - helpful and polite - it's just a shoddy system they are working with. One of them told me today that they are getting a new system at the end of the year,,,,, that won't help with payday looming again!

"I have repeated problems gaining access to these accounts online.

From the very start the system wouldn’t let me launch the service and after a lot of phone calls I finally got in – once! This was with the assistance of my husband who works in IT, and as such has a greater understanding of these things.

The next time I tried to access them I was locked out – again, and had to go through waiting for someone to ring me back (which they didn’t), and gain access again with assistance. That time I was trying to pay staff wages, which were delayed because of this.

Last night I tried to gain access again and was locked out again.

This time it is to pay a tax bill – which will now be late. I have spoken to 2 people this morning, and am yet again waiting for someone to call, but will be back at work again when they ring.

This is really the WORST online backing system I have ever used, and is making my situation with you almost untenable. I run 2 busy businesses, and need to be able to access my accounts at anytime to pay bills and transfer money. So far in my time with you this has NEVER happened.

If you are having such major problems with this system, I suggest you warn people BEFORE they move to you. I had many problems with HSBC, my former bank, but banking online was never one of them.

I would like to make this an official complaint, and would like it dealing with in the appropriate manner. I will copy this letter by email to as many departments as I can, and if I don’t hear anything from you in the next 5 days I will contact the Banking Ombudsman.

This has made me question my decision to move my business accounts over to you, and I will be researching alternatives whilst this problem is sorted out.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest opportunity."


Oh well - I will wait and see if they ever ring me......
And maybe pay my staff with good old fashioned cheques this month!

stormCat99

I think I've posted this elsewhere, but for those of you having such bad problems, try calling Tina Murray in Customer Relations - 0151 966 3863.

After nearly 6 months of trying to transfer my account and many ignored letters/emails/phone calls, finally I received a call from Tina. She was very apologetic, very helpful, and sorted things out for me (better late than never!). Also gave me £100 for my inconvenience.

HTH

MiM

I'm so glad I'm not alone! Furious with A&L. Tempt you in with bounty payment, promise quick and easy transfer process and it takes months.

To make matters worse, my employer didn't act upon instructions to pay salary into new account and old back took 24 days after receiving instruction to transfer my £2,000 balance - which then had to go through clearance (yes, even a bank-to-bank cheque!).

Due to all this - and the fact that they set up all my DDs etc before completing the transfer process - I went over the £1,000 overdraft limit and despite my pleas for this not to happen, payments including my mortgage were refused and charges well over £100 have been charged.

Just received terse written response to my complaint. All charges will stand as they acted within their specified transferring period.

Left bank with exellent customer service but poor products (RBS) for one with what looks like a good product but has the customer relations policy of Stalin's Russia.

I'm............arghh! Livid!

ken_1969

I have to say, I am very disappointed I didn't find this thread before deciding to move from Abbey National to Alliance & Leicester for my current account. We had a long period (for once!) of being in credit, and so the thought of the higher in-credit interest available in the online Premiere Account was very appealing.

A&L took our application, and promised us a smooth transfer, guaranteeing that we would incur no overdraft fees during the setup period.

I realised things were going wrong when we got our first "confirmation paperwork" through that said we had a standard online account, not the Premiere account, which of course meant we would not be benefitting from the higher interest. This surprised me as between my wife and I we have, I would say, a fairly good credit rating, given a combined annual salary of around £75k.

However, having committed to leave Abbey we decided to stick with it - the standard online account interest was still higher than Abbey's.

Within a couple of months though we started getting hit with unpaid direct debit and standing order notices. A&L had not been able to transfer all our dd's and so's. And so we got hit with around £150 in charges, which took us out of credit and into the red for the first time in ages. We filled in DD mandates and setup SO's but still because we were now sailing close to the red, and because A&L did not approve our overdraft requests, we got hit with more charges.

I have spent many long hours on the phone to A&L's customer services, who, admittedly, I have found to be as accommodating as possible - cancelling charges as far as possible, promising to look into our overdraft requests etc etc, but in general I feel that I have been ripped off and am seriously thinking about going back to Abbey.

I never had a single complaint against Abbey in the 20 odd years I banked with them, and although perhaps they didn't offer the best interest rates, I could go online and have a temporary overdraft increase approved and active within 24 hours and that probably saved us more than we could have earnt with A&L's premiere account, which we didn't qualify for anyway.

I have told A&L that if they don't authorise our o/d request this week we will be shutting our account and going elsewhere.

I feel a little betrayed by MoneysavingExpert.com that Martin is recommending A&L despite huge rounds of complaints about them here in the forum - of course I must take responsibility for not searching the forum myself but I will think twice (or thrice, or more) before taking his advice at face value!

ken_1969

scottmartin wrote:

4. In terms of the switching service, I know that there has been some problems. When launched, the premier plus account was not marketed heavily, yet received a phenomenal number of applications, probably due to sites like this and reviews in newspapers. The switching department simply could not handle the high volume of requests, and subsequently problems occurred.

You must keep in mind that it is a free service, even though it is quite expensive to provide. Add this to the market leading interest rate and opening incentives offered, you have to admit, it is a good deal.

When things go wrong with it, and you incurr charges that are not your fault (as I actually did when I had to open my account when I started working for them), you also have to keep in mind that the charges are computer generated. It simply sees that your account is overdrawn, and applies the charges accordingly. When you speak to someone, who has the intelligence to realise that it is not your fault, I'm sure that there wouldn't be a single case when they are not refunded.

Fair enough, but basically all that says is that for the majority of people out there who aren't willing to complain about these charges, they will have to live with them, and A&L are more than happy to make HUGE profits off these charges. As someone in IT in the finance sector I can tell you that the profit margin on these bank charges is about 99%.

As you already charge interest on overdrafts, the bank charges made are really only there to cover the fraction of a second it takes the computer to realise you are overdrawn, and the cost of a printout and a letter. Probably about 40p in all. Yet the charges are around £25 plus. That is a massive profit margin in anyone's books. I know my company would be delighted to have such a huge markup on services.

At the end of the day, A&L made £272m profit in the 6 months up to June this year, and retail banking (ie us) accounted for £211m of that.

With 1.5m bank accounts that averages about £141 per account. Obviously many accounts are in credit, but those in the red are providing the vast majority of these profits and I would suggest a very large proportion of that is from these illegal bank charges.

If we don't fight back they will continue to make these massive profits off of our laziness. As someone who only recently has started standing up and fighting for my rights - and benefiting considerly from it - I think we all have a duty to advise our friends and family to do the same and cut these banks profts down to size!

MarkyMarkD

Ken

I don't think your figure of £141 per current account is correct at all - the profit figure you quote is for retail banking, but that includes mortgages, savings, personal loans, insurance ... and current accounts.

mrsw

I have complained in writing to A&L three times in less than a year! They are the most appalling bank I have ever dealt with.

In my last complaint, I demanded that they refund the cost of my time and phone calls, not really expecting to receive anything, they credited my account with £20. So it's worth complaining.

jamescredmond

Good God! So i'm not the only one. set up my account and waited for dd/so transfers................... 15 months!!!!
hope somebody in a+l cus. svcs sees all these posts!!

Oscar7

I too have had appalling service with A & L though not with the setting up of the account (although my husband did). Money actually disappeared from my savings account (which I could only link to one other account in MY name) and appeared in my husband's separate A & L account(no joint names). I have complained many many times and have either been ignored or told they were told to move the money because of a BACS transfer & they couldn't ignore it (despite there being no mention of my name or permission from me on it).

Oh and last night I wanted to move some money so set it up online thinking it would go out today-oh no, because it was actioned after 8.30pm it won't go out until 2 working days later! Silly me- I thought internet banking was supposed to make things easier. I should have withdrawn it from a branch/cashpoint and TAKEN it to the other bank account!

I have found the staff to be unhelpful, unobliging and the service is quite frankly the worst I've encountered!

savingforoz

Just found this thread - am relieved I'm not the only one to experience bad service with A & L - and I'm a brand new customer! The woman I spoke to in Customer Services was sarcastic and patronising. The Internet "Help" (!!!!) desk simply disconnected after a recorded message. If I thought I'd achieve anything I'd complain about her attitude. I'm tempted to close my accounts down, if it weren't for the 12% regular saver, as that would be the proverbial cutting off nose to spite face...but am still annoyed.