Abbey Business Account nightmare

save-a-lot

Hi

Brother-in-law and I arranged an appointment at the branch to open a business account as we want to start a plastering business. This was in mid December. The problem started when the person we were dealing with found out that they had no joint application forms left, she advised that it would be ok to fill in two single trader application forms and she would post them together in one envelope to get them processed. So we sat in the branch for 30-40 minutes going through all the forms and provided more id than was required.

Then in early January I get a letter stating the wrong application form had been filled in, I called them and stated that this really was not my problem as we had made an appointment at the branch to open the account and due to incompetence of their staff this situation had arose. I told the guy on the phone that we were assured that it would be ok as there was no actual difference between the forms, only that there was room for two applicants on the joint form.

In this mailing they provided the correct application form, eventually I gave in and signed and got my b-i-l to sign the joint form. I took this into the local branch and showed them the letter. They said that there was no need to provide proofs of id again as this had been done in December.

Anyway, today (11/01) I have received another letter stating that they require proofs of i.d. - I then had to phone again and I went on to explain that we made an appointment in December and opened the account in branch and that the branch should now sort it out with the central processing place, because after all it was their incompetance that has led to this situation.

I think it is awful customer service to place the responsibility completely on the customer when the customer has done nothing wrong. How come the offending branch does not feature in sorting this out. I refused to fill anything else in as I had done it all before, and in answer to this I got - "well we cannot take your application forward". I feel my hands are tied and I have to do as they say - it seems there has been alot of mistakes and Abbey will not make them right.

The worst of it is that the account should have been open about now and cards, paying in books, cheque books etc should have been arriving if everything had gone to plan. I think we are looking at Feb before the account is open and we have in our possession everything we need to run the account.

Has anyone else experienced their awful customer service????

windswept

we have an abbey business account, everything has been fine until I tried to open a savings account with them, it has taken 3 months to finally sort it out, they just kept requesting more i.d. from me, in the end, I went into my local branch and insisted they photocopied all my i.d. and faxed it through in front of me, which they did and then everything went through ok. I think there must be a glitch in their system somewhere in the new accounts dept. as the business account is simplicity itself to run, I would persevere with it as it is the cheapest account to run by by far.

yummynanny

We have had a business account with Abbey for three years now with no real problems. What you need to bear in mind is that the branches are there solely for personal customers. Business centre and branches (personal) are two separate entities. The branch is just for convenience to pay cheques in if you prefer not to post them. They will try to help you if you ask, but you are better dealing with the Business Centre direct. You can only really deal with the business side of things by e-mail and telephone which, if this suits you is fine. Their telephone customer service is excellent and they will even ring you back, saving the cost of the call and the endless waiting in queues. It is the cheapest business account and if you run it as though there are no branch offices, then everything works well. Good luck with your application and I hope you get things sorted out shortly.

save-a-lot

I know the account is good and I feel I have little option but to put up with this to get the account EVENTUALLY running. But generally speaking is the customer service usually as bad as this?

It seems like there is alot of red tape and that they would rather lose a customer than sort things out.