Abbey/Santander Credit Card - what a joke!

ewanmclaren

Myself and my wife have had an Abbey card for a few months now. Rather than re-type our problems, below is a copy of a letter we sent to them appx 6 weeks ago regarding our account :



We have been in possession of an Abbey credit card for approximately 6 months now. Unfortunately in this time we have encountered a few problems that have left us disillusioned with the service provided.

Firstly over the first couple of months the statements we received were erratic at best, on one month we didn’t receive a statement at all!

Then over the summer we contacted you by telephone to instruct you to alter the monthly direct debit to pay off the full amount. However some three weeks later (the next time a payment was taken) an amount in the region of £836 was taken despite this bearing no resemblance to either the full amount outstanding on the card at the previous statement date, or even the total amount of the transactions between the two previous statements. It was only the following month that the full amount was taken, which obviously incurred further (unnecessary) interest charges.

However the icing on the cake has to be the situation that has unfolded over the past 2 months or so. We noticed in September a number of transactions from our previous statement that we did not recognise. Immediately upon finding these, we telephoned your customer service department (around the 8th of September) to report these transactions.

After a long telephone call where we identified these transactions individually, we were informed that forms would be sent out for us to sign to confirm that these transactions were invalid.

However as of this past week (Thursday 4th October) nothing has been received so we contacted you again by telephone to be told that you have no record of these transactions being reported as invalid! After going through all the transactions individually a second time, we were told this time that someone from disputes will call us back “within 7 days”.


Unfortunately by this point our confidence has been eroded to zero, hence this letter.

Please take this letter as our official notification to you to cancel completely our account. A cheque for £XXX.XX is attached, which as you can see from the attached sheet, is the amount left when subtracting the disputed statements from our last credit card statement. Originally this statement would have been due to been paid for via direct debit by the 15th October, however we have cancelled the direct debit.

Therefore :

1) Please cancel our account.

2) The cheque attached covers our outstanding balance minus the disputed transactions, if you need signatures to confirm these transactions as outstanding, that is fine – however other than this we consider this account now closed.

3) Please forward written confirmation that our account is totally clear and that these disputes have been removed from our account/resolved by 30th November 2007, else I shall be forced to take this case further.


This letter was sent by special delivery, and guess what we've heard since? Absolutely nothing other than 2 letters.

1) A statement showing us owing still in the region of £600 (yes you guessed it, the fraudulent transactions plus interest) - however they have cashed the cheque that was sent, stapled to the above letter!

2) A second letter apologising for the delay in sending us our new cards, which, ironically, specifies that they offer protection against fraudulent use of the card!

Any comments or advice on the next step with this shower of losers welcome!

missile

You need to raise a customer complaint - yes you may think you already have but ......... keep it polite, brief, to the point and try to avoid the sarcasm.

Then contact the ombudsman.

stogiebear

This company has the worst credit card service in the world. It's absolutely bloody rubbish.

PhantomUK

I have a paypal credit card which is also owned by Santander and I must say the customer service is appalling, the online card management system is a complete joke and doesnt even work correctly, and when you do email them with an enquiry or complaint they simply IGNORE it!

Who is the regulator we need to complain too?

jonnyenglish

I always find that companies and organisations take your complaint far more seriously and are more efficient in actioning it when it is lodged in person rather than by telephone where they haven't got a face to face situation. Previously I understand that they could refer your complaint to MBNA who used to issue and underwrite the Abbey branded credit cards but now that Santander issue and underwrite their own credit cards this is no longer the case.

What about taking copies of all your documents and going into the nearest Santander branch and pursue this? I'm sure that a Santander branch manager won't want a customer complaining at the customer service desk within earshot of other customers. Hopefully you will get the result you are looking for.

drakhan

This is a lttle complicated. My wife has power of attorney over her sisters financial affairs. She had a credit card with santander and last year we tried to close it but the cheek of the customer service people even angered santander branch people. They refused to discuss the card account with my wife even though they had a copy of the power of attorney and were legally obliged to do so. First they said they didnt have a copy (we had a confirmation letter stating they did), second they said they cant find account detail for card (above confirmation letter had them) and the best bit my wife didnt pass security checks even though this call was from the branch and we were sitting with the manager and the call was being monitored and when they refused to discuss this the manager had to get involved. Just before she got involved we threatened legal action and to find out were they worked and have them sacked. All they said was Who cares i dont work in uk so go ahead and try.The manager heard this and demanded to speak to their supervisor. They hung up on her. Eventually it was sorted by the branch manager who told us to ignore any letters from credit card people as she would get account cleared and closed. This was done but no thanks to credit card customer service.in essence DONT GET A CREDIT CARD FROM SANTANDER.

spursfan14

No sure which address you raised your complain with, but this is the dress for their main complaints (not customer service) department-

Abbey House
PO BOX 534
201 Grafton Gate East
Central Milton Keynes
MK9 1AN

Don't forget to always send all correspondence recorded delivery and keep a copy for yourself.

Wednesday

[EMAIL="Antonio.Osorio@santander.co.uk"]Antonio.Osorio@santander.co.uk[/EMAIL] - Chief Executive in UK.

I too sent them a special delivery complaint (at a cost of £5 to me which was never refunded) that they claimed never to have received.

Funnily enough, I got a very quick reply (but unsatisfactory) when I emailed the Chief Exec!

Hope this helps

Wednesday

Damn! Just saw how old the original post is.

izools

jonnyenglish wrote: »

I'm sure that a Santander branch manager won't want a customer complaining at the customer service desk within earshot of other customers.

Not the case in the Exeter High Street branch.

I remember one time I went in to seek an increase of my OD limit. Before the lady on the helpdesk looked at my account she just laughed at me and said no.

My oh my did she look stupid when I called telephone banking, got an agent to confirm to her that my £300 OD could be increased to £2,000 there and then if I wished.

She certainly got a rollocking from me but the branch manager didn't seem to care. Par for the course at Abbey!

Robbie1216

Seems to be the "norm" for this bank I've been waiting since april for their zero card but had heard nothing. After alot of phone calls and transfers to different departments I finally got to speak to someone who gave a toss and got told by them my application was basically in no mans land with nothing being done to it since I applied. But they have now forwarded it to the complaints department to kick back into action.
I have no intentions of using the card now as I have applied for the post office one.