Alliance & Leicester - my experience

David@jcb

Fairdo wrote:

As others have said in their posts, there is no excuse for poor service, but at the moment, it does seem to be the way of the world.

I spend all day dealing with incompitencies like this, most days.
QUOTE]

Fairdo,

I know this is somewhat of a rhetorical question, but, why is it the way of the world?
Just over the last few days I have dealt with some of the most inconcievably ill informed people this country has to offer - usually either in the utility provider segment, or, in retail.
Surely people do have a pride in their work, and do enjoy working with and for people, it just seems to be getting worse.

As for A&L they are a Jekyl and Hyde company - offering undoubtedly some of the best value banking and lending products available, whilst managing to single handedly remove any notion that customer service should not be an option!

Sorry it turned into a bit of a moan -

Basically
Products - very good
Customer service - whats that!

Fairdo_2

David@jcb

Unfortunately, you have hit the nail on the head.

In the Mortgage market, without making a sweeping generalisation (Okay - I am!) it seems that some of the best product providers have the worst service record.

I was about to name some names, but thought better off, as I do not want to be casting concerns that a MSE moderator needs to remove any of my text.

Just to say that generally, when a lender offers better than average products, brokers (who account for a high percentage of Mortgage Business) will tend to use them in bulk. Lenders are only geared up to handle a certain amount of business at a time. This then causes the lender to either start slipping behind and start asking staff to do overtime, try to bring in new casual staff (Which they have to take some time training) or do nothing and let the backlog build up. As this happens, Morale goes lower and staff find it difficult to cope, they sometimes need to pull the rate and, if they give notice of withdrawal, brokers get frantic and submit more business whilst it is still available, causing the backlog to increase!

As service drops further, brokers start phoning more and shouting the odds, this in turn takes time and effort for people to answer the complaints, etc, etc.

You can see the vicious cycle.

On top of this, the staff employed are generally not paid very well. Turnover of staff is high, Morale is low, training is continual and they are dealing with annoyed brokers who often feel they need to be prioritised as they are the "solely most important source of introduced business for that lender" and the staff are unlikely to be motivated to speed up with constant complaints and an increasing workload.

See, I can see the other side of the coin aswell!!!!

cheghead

johannamse wrote:

OMG...we had MANY problems when remortgaging with A&L. I would never use them again. They get my vote for most rubbish financial institution of the year!

Took out a fixed rate of 3.49% almost 2 years ago. Found them to be exellent!

DaveCarpetbag

cheghead wrote:

Took out a fixed rate of 3.49% almost 2 years ago. Found them to be exellent!

My daughter also has A&L fixed at 3.49% for 2 years. It ends this month. If she does nothing the SVR is 6.84%.

She is looking at another A&L 2 year fix at 5.06%. I have advised her to get her financial advisor on the case to try and negotiate waiving the £250 admin fee - when I tried "computer said no".

If she switches to another lender, A&L get a golden handshake of £295.

MarkyMarkD

I doubt she'll avoid the £250 switcher fee, and given that she's saving £295 (and remortgage costs), and getting another reasonable deal, surely it's worth her staying with A&L?

She did well to get 3.49% fixed - oh, happy days of two years ago, eh?

brannyrhino_2

This is a case of the new English Disease of Complaining and moaning without foundation. If you read your documents properly they you may understand what you are paying for which is a valuation for the banks own purposes.

These valuations are often done using Desktop valuations wherby no valuer attends the property at all. Desk top valuations are done on lower LTVs cases and are based on information gathered by valuation companies and as they are in America they will become the norm here in the next five years.

Ps You are adding to their bad customer service as you are wasting their time on your unneccesary complaint.