Friday 3 September 2010

How bad are Santander?

Story so far: happy customer at Alliance & Leicester using their online service to access my mother's account (as Power of Attorney). My mother is suffering with dementia so caring is a time consuming activity. So you do not want to waste time with an incompetent bank. 

And then along came Santander and decided to takeover A&L. OK whilst they kept the banks separate but disaster when they started to migrate the A&L accounts to Santander.

Problems immediately! Logon to account worked OK but could not see the balance for several accounts or access individual accounts to see transactions. More importantly no access to Standing orders or Direct debits. I need to change DDs occasionally and to change standing orders amounts on a monthly basis.

No help at the Branch level - you have to phone Telephone Banking. Oh no, how long do you have to wait to speak to an operator? Ages - probably exaggerated by the faltering migration process. When you eventually get through, you can arrange transactions: good lord for something. However, when you ask the call center person when the problem will be sorted - they say they are working on it and do not worry it will be sorted by next month.

Four months later, yes that's right 4 months later the problem still exists. Yes, I was fuming! So rang Customer Service and after being fobbed off by more excuses asked to speak to a Customer Service Manager - wait, wait, wait, wait and eventually connected. No help but the Manager now tells me that ALL accounts with Power of Attorney are having the same problem!! Steaming but then asked how long before the problem would be sorted? No idea, we are working on it.

I cannot believe it Mr Meldrew! So I asked to speak to the Manager of the Migration process. No one person responsible sir. OK, then can you give me the name of the Director responsible? Sorry but not able to give you that information.

"We are Santander" - we are bad. The pain in Spain falls mainly on the main. Hope you migrate to a different bank.

Posted via email from Grumpy Old Men

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