Abbey... What a bunch of gummy bears..

PhilUK_3

I have been with them for over 7 years now and when I call them to check my account I goto India. I am not a rasit (cant even spell it) but it winds me up. The call takes 3 times longer to get the info.

I have been switching to natwest now.. anyone else getting pied with them? there credit card is crap most of the time and the amount of times they send me 2-4 cheques with my credit card statment..

dives me up the wall.

The last !!!!! about them is when you go into the bank and ask for something there like.. phone telebanking.. I said I also wanted to invest some money.. she was ok you can come into this room.. I said.. So you want my money now and told her that ill go else were.

davidcampbell

less than half our telebanking staff are in india so your call will hit india less than half the time on average

The last !!!!! about them is when you go into the bank and ask for something there like.. phone telebanking.. I said I also wanted to invest some money.. she was ok you can come into this room.. I said.. So you want my money now and told her that ill go else were.

that one ill give you. unfortunately some of our branch staff thorugh a combination of laziness and poor training have failed to grasp the idea that customer should be assisted at first point of contact where possible

:mad:

DC

dchurch24

Just my 2pence worth.

I recently wanted a list of charges made on my account for the last year, and so wrote a letter to Abbey head office requesting this.
I received a letter (actually 3 letters in total all on the same day) all saying the same thing, from 3 different people, but in different words!! Not one mention of the requested list in any of them???!!!??

I phoned them (for about the 10th time) and finally got through to a very nice girl who promised me that the list would be in the post that day and would be with me within 3 days.

3 Days later, I phoned her again, and was informed that it would be in the post that day etc...

After something like 9 weeks of phoning every three days, it finally arrived - albeit with date errors.

Abbey = Nightmare in my opinion. I used to be with Barclays, and I thought that customer service could get no lower. How wrong was I???

When I first joined the Abbey, they had only just become a bank, and I believe still had some 'building society' principles. Sadly, now they are just as greedy as the others.

PhilUK_3

I now bank with natwest.. and they are great.. abbey suck big time. I see a lot of people leaving that bank

dchurch24

Sadly, I would say that all banks are bad.

It's just some are higher up the 'bad' scale than others.

I have an account with a French bank, and while things do happen slowly, things do get done, and fairly at that. A stark contrast.

mrcow

PhilUK wrote:

I have been with them for over 7 years now and when I call them to check my account I goto India. I am not a rasit (cant even spell it) but it winds me up. The call takes 3 times longer to get the info.

It's not just Abbey.

I've got to say it, but I've banked with Lloyds for years and after they switched to an (English??) centralised call centre about 8 years ago, the telephone service is just the pits.

I don't think it's got much to do with it being in India, more to do with paying for an 0845 number to then be put into a queue, for someone then to be reading off a bloomin script at you, to them not being able to answer your query/request, so you then got on a callback list for your branch to contact you at their earliest convienience.

Internet banking....best thing I ever signed up for!

Couldn't tell you whether Lloyds have switched any of their call centre facilities abroad, as I avoid phoning then like the plague!

bargains83

Abbey have always been fine with me, they have never made any charges against me (and so they shouldn't because I manage my account well) and the staff in my local branch have always been friendly and helpful enough and at the time I got the account they were the only bank willing to give me an account with some half decent facilities because I wasn't able to prove any of my income.

The only thing that is bothering me at the moment is that I find myself having to pester to get them to issue me with a VISA card to replace my Electron one. I asked in branch and they said to phone telebanking but im not comfortable discussing my bank account over the phone so wrote them a letter over a month ago and never got a reply so I wrote them another one last week and im now hoping to hear soon.

They've just bumped my overdraft limit up to £300 though without any trouble, its just a shame that I hardly ever use it and would much prefer them to be as forthcoming with a decent Debit card.

dchurch24

So apart from the poor service, the telebanking and the willingness to get you into debt with them, they are great yes?
;-)

bargains83

dchurch24 wrote:

So apart from the poor service, the telebanking and the willingness to get you into debt with them, they are great yes?
;-)

I didn't say they provide poor service, the letter I sent could quite easily have got lost in the post or gone to the wrong department. In my experience with Abbey for regular day to day banking they are the best bank i've ever been with and I've tried Yorkshire Bank, Barclays and HSBC in the past. All of which I've found to be pretty poor and if I already had a proper debit card with abbey I wouldn't ever have needed to contact them once the entire time i've had the account and would be giving them a raving review.

As for willingness to let you get in to debt, all banks and companies offering credit facilities are like that but they will only give you what they think you can afford to pay back. I'm sure if I abused the overdraft or cut down the amount of money being payed into the account they would revoke it pretty sharpish.

As far as customer service goes I think every UK bank is lacking in that department. A friend of mine went into Barclays (against my advice) to open an account and had to make an appointment in order to do it. Whilst also there another friend of mine was waiting for an appointment to get an overdraft. I can probably understand the need to make appointments to open accounts but to have to come into branch and sit around for an hour just to add facilities to your account is a bit of a joke.

davidcampbell

dchurch24 wrote:

So apart from the poor service, the telebanking and the willingness to get you into debt with them, they are great yes?
;-)

hehehe

that made me laugh :rotfl:

dchurch24

Sorry, I just have a bit of a beef with Abbey at the moment.