Santander

wincott

We’ll biggest mistake was to leave first director Santander 

so far they have failed to pay 2 direct debits costing me £29 in interest also they blocked the credit card they gave me after only 2 days told me to speak with the fraud team who never got back to me. They have cost me over 5 hours on the phone what a waste.

And now I’m switching back to first Direct 

happy days at least they answered my calls in record time 

eskbanker

Doesn't sound like an enjoyable experience, are you submitting a complaint to get your costs reimbursed?

Robin9

Were you using the Current Account Switch Service ?  Were the DD's identified by First Direct ?  Is your Credit Card still blocked ?

daveyjp

I've been a customer for years with no issues, but my daughter is trying to open a basic savings account to sit alongside a current account she has had for about 6 years.  The whole process is becoming a severe act of patience to the point she is looking at moving current and savings to another provider.

friolento

daveyjp said:

I've been a customer for years with no issues, but my daughter is trying to open a basic savings account to sit alongside a current account she has had for about 6 years.  The whole process is becoming a severe act of patience to the point she is looking at moving current and savings to another provider.

May I ask what attracts her to a currently available Santander basic savings account? What are the difficulties she experiences, as usually Santander savings accounts open near instantly for existing customers?

Lightning360

The issue with posts like this is that all banks will have issues from time to time. I've had nothing ever go wrong with Santander. I've called them a few times and have been shocked when they picked up straight away. First Direct on the other hand took over 45 mins to pick up the phone when I needed to add my card to Google Pay.

I'm not saying don't move away from Santander, but rather these sorts of issues can appear at any bank, including First Direct.

GeoffTF

14 million customers:

https://www.santander.co.uk/about-santander

One complaint here. I have not had any serious problems. People complain about all the other banks too.

400ixl

You see far more complaints about Santander than First Direct on here and the results of the customer satisfaction surveys back that up.

daveyjp

friolento said:

daveyjp said:

I've been a customer for years with no issues, but my daughter is trying to open a basic savings account to sit alongside a current account she has had for about 6 years.  The whole process is becoming a severe act of patience to the point she is looking at moving current and savings to another provider.

May I ask what attracts her to a currently available Santander basic savings account? What are the difficulties she experiences, as usually Santander savings accounts open near instantly for existing customers?

Her current account balance is too high and she just needs a savings account to park the money while she sorts out longer term savings accounts.  These are all taking time to open due to ID requirements.

The Santander issue is apparently becuase she has just turned 18, yet this wasn't an issue with changing her current account from a child to adult account.

friolento

400ixl said:

You see far more complaints about Santander than First Direct on here and the results of the customer satisfaction surveys back that up.

I am a customer of both and find they both have their good and their bad points but Santander offers me much better value than FD. 

Examples:

FD refused to increase my overdraft from (the free) £250 to £300. Santander offered me £5,000 straight away. None of the Santander overdraft is free of charge but as I will settle any overdraft immediately, this doesn’t matter to me.


Santander pay cashback on certain DDs. This is worth over £60 a year for me (YMMV). I can’t get anything like this from FD.

As I have been with FD for well over a decade, I never qualify for their switch offer. Santander paid me over £700 in switch offers to date. Unlikely that FD can ever match this.

FD has a lovely Regular Saver, paying 7% and allowing £300 a month. Santander RS is 5% and £250 a month only.

Other Santander savings accounts usually beat anything available from FD. E.g. the lovely 7% Edge Saver account, which easily beats the FD RS in flexibility.

Santander currently have a lovely 2% cashback credit card. No cashback from the FD credit card.

Both have relatively decent online and app support, allowing me to do nearly everything I need to do without having to call them. I have had one or two disappointing experiences with Santander CS which usually resulted in a compensation payment. I have not much experience with FD CS - last time I remember calling them was a few years ago to sort my online access which had stopped because I had changed my phone. 

The prospect/ hope of better CS would not make me switch from Santander to FD. I will keep both - FD for its RS, and Santander for everything else (that’s everything else apart from other, better, things I can get from yet other providers , such as ISAs and easy access savings).

RedImp_2

400ixl said:

You see far more complaints about Santander than First Direct on here and the results of the customer satisfaction surveys back that up.

I suppose they have 10 times as many customers