Citywire employee wins £460 compensation from Santander

This experience sounds all too familiar within the general context of service from Santander. Firstly they never take/use initiative to resolve problems at an earlier stage, and then merely sit back and allow things to escalate before finally deciding to do anything...

My wife and I opened a joint account with Santander, we were told that in order to so, we would have to also take a credit card from them. We initially agreed.

A few weeks later, we noticed that my wife hadnt recieved her card, we contacted them to be told that they had sent it to an address that she lived at over 6 years ago. (not forgetting my wifes current account is with them)

We informed them and they promised to correct the problem, and they sent the card to the incorrect address again.

We complained, we were then told that we didnt have to apply for a credit card when opening the account. They could not explain why the errors had occurred. They refused to close the account without visiting the branch and insisted that we have a £500 overdraft they we didnt want.

We did recieve £250 compensation, but no explantion of the poor service.

The only thing that might help stop this is an expensive fine from the FSA. If Santander carry on like this, it'll happen.

God help the RBS customers taken over.

It appears that your own employees don't bother to read your columns: Just a mention of Santander ellicits a deluge of truly angry responses so he of all people should have known better.

For my part I would not open an acount with this shower if they were the only bank in the world - which they may well become! - after my experience with Abbey. I'd rather keep my money in a shoe box under the bed.

I have had so many problems with Santander - non resolved without a complaint - I have now closed all my accounts and will NEVER use this rubbish company again - absolutely shocking customer service.

Santander has taken over Abbey, A&L and now the RBS branches with the customers in those Branches.The RBS customers should be given a choice to be switched to Natwest. The RBS letter I received makes no mention of any offer of choice. An American Credit card Company has the largest business in UK.They have taken over a very large number of other UK credit card businesses over the last 8-10 years.The American Credit card company has set the trend to charge exorbitant balance transfer and interest charges.This is a worrying trend.Can Citywire please do some research to protect the public.

Thanks

Prakash

I am also a victim of this company's terrible customer service and overcharging. They are fast becoming the UK's WORST company for responding to customer issues and complaints.

I tried to close an old ABBEY online account that had been made dormant,couldn'tn do it online & was told to go to a branch to unlock it (can't be done online) they kept me waiting 1 hour whilst they unlocked it then told me to go back home to close it online.Online didn't recognise any of my details & I eventually closed the account by telephone.

Anyone dealing with Santander need to escalate, escalate and escalate again. It is tiresome but go through the complaints procedure.

DO NOT speak to them on the phone (talk is cheap) unless you can record it (inform them if you do so). Send letters to them via recorded delivery and eventually your problems will be solved.

Be prepared to take it all the way to the FSA if you are not satisfied with their "final response".

Hardly service of any description from this and many other high street banks, this Country is wide open for a US style expansion; after all they invented service.

Mr Jeens -Williams should have been compensated well in excess of what he was by Santander after all the stress he went through .

""Allegedly"" Santanter has by far the worst customer service of any bank and my experience suport this.

Once i had to visit one of their miserable brances to open an account, and there was a long queue infront of me.. When finally it came to the last customer (woman) infront of me, she apparently was a friend of the female cashier and they startyed talking about family and old friends and holidays and such.

After 5 minutes of this, I politely pointed out that there was a long queue of customers waiting for service The cashier then told me angrily she was only socialising with acustomer as part of her job, while her customer friend started shouting and calling me all sorts of names.

i left without concluding my business there and I shall never set foot in a Santanter bank again. Not for a miserable L100 pounds and not even for L1000. The funny thing is that somehow I came to own some of their shares. Does any one want them?

No surprise

Any mention of the "S" word invokes a tidal wave of discontent. I could operate a bank better from the front room of my house.

Firstly I would like to thank Victoria for taking up my case and all the hard work/badgering she has on my behalf after what I can only describe as sheer switching bank hell which I think has aged me at least three years and lost confidence in the banking system for the individual.

I can't convey how happy I was to receive the phone call to say that I would be getting all my money back for the fees that I had wrongly occurred, as I had considered regaining my fee a complete lost cause after months of numerous telephone conversations to the brick wall that was A&L (now Santander).

I can't express how lucky I am to be working for Citywire (there is something to be said about being in the right place at the right time) where they were able to pursue my complaint with the company's weight behind it.

Even though the situation has been resolved, I still feel angered by the whole situation and the way I was treated for the conception of this whole charade.

So if you are looking to switch bank hear my warning, do your research and make sure they do what they promise so you don't go through this fiasco like I have and if are in a similar situation don't give up - it's your hard earned money so don't waste it on their mistakes.

The mere sight of the "S" word got me riled enough to leave a comment but after scrolling down through the existing ones i have little to add.. Shambolic service, poor telephone banking facilities, incompetent staff (poorly trained - in their defense).

I also had the misfortune to work for them. I can catagorically state that they do not care about their customers. The practice highlighted by Anon1 is common place where by customers are told they must take a credit card with their current account (or it comes free with it) to boost their own sales figures. Don't start me on their structured products...

Santander in Spain charges for everything, simply opening and acc. with them, they charge admin charges, on and on and on. also the way they present the acc. balance sent by post are very confusing. Banks in this country are much more trusty.

Following a really bad experience with Santander I would ask anybody to think carefully before transferring their bank accounts to this failing company. After very poor customer service I reported Santander to the Financial Ombudsman Service and received eventually received a refund for the incorrect charges that has been deducted.

Most of the comments so far show complete sympathy Mr Jeens-Williams. I regret I cannot add mine.

I am sure that had he opened an account with a positive net balance at the outset, none of these problems would have occurred. You can't put all the blame on the staff. Computer accountancy software works on the principle that it has a positive capital sum from which it can add to or subtract from. If you try to commence the calculations with a minus quantity the whole thing goes Haywire. Personally I would expect to be refused an account if I was already overdrawn at another bank.

Overdraft facilities are only supposed to be an additional service to save customers from financial embarrassment in the event that they are temporarily short of funds. Overdrafts are not designed to provide a capital sum as the basis of account management.

You may able to understand my reasoning if I give you an analogy.

I once worked for a company which granted its employees 4 weeks paid holiday. Workers would also receive their full wages if they were sick for periods not exceeding 4 weeks per year. However after awhile the system became abused because some members of staff used these days as additional holidays and considered sickness entitlement as theirs as of right, and not a generous, discretionary, perk.

I opened an acount with Alliance & Leicester some time back, but their staff were so rude and unhelpful, and the telephone servcie so poor, that I declined to move a very considerable sum across to them. They didnt bat an eyelid when I advised I wasnt intending to deposit the funds with them, other than to tell me that I "misunderstood" their staff member being rude. Anyone who deals with this bank does so at their peril.

I prefer anonymity.

Given the poor customer service from Santander, perhaps people will come to appreciate the good service (no problems) provided by the other banks.

Not only a good service but also free cheque book, free cheque payment, direct debit and deposit transactions, free cash points, free statements sent out, free internet banking, and free branch service.

Come on Citiwire, we are all quick to be critical, time to praise the others!

The problems encountered by Mr Jeens-Williams in opening and closing an account were experienced by me when handling a bond for my mother, then aged 89. Santander had just taken over Abbey: the marriage of the two resembled the coupling of the Exorcist with Damien Omen 1. It was truly a scary experience to witness a system that was, apparently, designed to frustrate the reasonable expectations of the customer at every turn. It looked as if the intent was simply to keep the funds invested (which had matured and which we wished to remove) against the wishes of the owner. An account opened by phone from France could, apparently, only be closed by visiting a branch in the UK. Etc. Etc. We took action against the bank and were successful in FOS proceedings.

I note that there are no posts at all in defence of Santander.

Surely there must be one customer prepared to stand up and be counted? Or perhaps one of the Santander staff willing to defend their employer?

Well folks , just look at the adverts these banks put out on the commercial channels . They are aimed at idiots . That is what the banks must think we are .

Bad news, I'm afraid, as a former complaint handler for Santander, I KNOW you could have done a lot better than restitution + £50 D&I. Had you declined the offer and threatened to escalate the matter to FOS, you would have noticed a sharp increase in their compensation offer, as Santander are desperate to avoid the £500 Case Handling Fee that FOS levy on them every time a complaint is referred.

Anyway, I didn't think it was news that Santander's Customer Service is shocking. As an independent contractor, I have worked in the complaints department of many banks and they are the only ones who can mess-up account openings, account closures and everything in between.

Santander retail Banking is an operation run on the cheap. They have young inexperienced staff,who are generally poorly trained with incompetent call centre staff keeping the customers away from getting their complaints put right. To get anything done properly you have to ride shot gun, and chase ,chase and chase again to get what you want done. When you finally suceed CLOSE DOWN all accounts and get the hell out of the place.

Two and a half years ago my wife and I took out a mortgage. Borrowing not much more than 25% of the house’s mythical equity value. I am retired on private pension plus an augmented state pension due to SERPS. Wife works full time and much younger. We chose a 16 year term to coincide with wife's expected retirement date of 60-ish Fine! Recent events indicated that ill-health might be a possibility that could stop her working for the whole term, so we planned for her possible earlier retirement. So, well able to pay right now, we upped our monthly repayments to a level that would knock about 8 years off the term - the idea being that in, say, 3 years time, we could revert to the original mortgage deal and, as we'd have paid off a chunk, the future payments would be a fair bit lower for the last several years of the mortgage, easier to make and even less of a risk to the lender, as we got older. When upping the payments, no mention was made by the bank that we couldn’t “drop back” if needed. NOT drop behind, just back to the original term. The mortgage has now under five years to go. If we CAN continue with the higher amounts for five years and pay it off, we will – as the plan is to pay what we can for as long as we can. But we planned for possible changes in circumstances. Illness, redundancy?

Problem? Possible redundancy looming might (who am I kidding? WILL!) make our continuing payments at this higher level unrealistic, so we will need to revert to the original mortgage term to make the payments , well, payable. As our initial agreement. Our mortgage suppliers tell us we CAN'T go back to original term - only one that will now end on MY 75th birthday, thus making the payments higher than they were just a few months ago when we started to “overpay. Seemingly it’s a “one way ratchet” They say the rules have changed since we took out our mortgage apparently and they won’t honour our original arrangement going on until my 80th IF REQUIRED due to loss of job. Even though it should be obvious that insisting on much higher payments (and now over a shorter term) will be riskier to the lender in later years. The payments will be higher because the lender won’t revert to the original term, that they agreed at the outset was a viable mortgage. We are in a better position now than we were some years ago but the expected repayments on THIS (shorter) term, with a job loss, would be difficult, if not impossible in later years, unless we used savings. As the idea was/is to reduce payments/break the back of the mortgage by overpaying - THEN later years would have a lower payment commitment. Easier and therefore less of a risk to both parties.

We started this overpayment plan in order to save and as a future safety net: NOT to burden ourselves into retirement, but to make it easier. Our lender’s insistence we now continue on higher payments, rather what the original arrangement was, makes it worse all round. After all, the longer our mortgage, the more they will make! The plan was to pay in when we could (like now) and revert to more manageable payments – as under the original plan – in the not-so-good times. Seemed good management.

Any experts out there with advice and/or experience here? I am saying nowt about WHO this bank is. Anyone care to guess?

I have just been in contact with Santander for the first time in my life. I did not join them but sadly, they swallowed up Alliance and Leicester. They left me on hold for 25 minutes until I gave up (it didn't matter it was an 0800 number). I rang back and spoke to somebody different. I was then given totally different advice from the first person I spoke to (they cannot both be right). What was my enquiry? Simple, how much money including interest is in my account as I am thinking of closing it. They could not even tell me that and gave different excuses as to why.

Absolutely pathetic. The worst bank I have ever come across. My advice? Avoid them like the plague!

Banco Santander has a property fund in Spain ( Santander Banif Inmobiliario ) which was sold, mainly by branches to pensioners as a conservative, low risk fund. In Nov 2008, a handful of large fundholders (who represented 16% of holdings) sold their holdings in one central Madrid branch prior to a drastic devaluation. According to the regulations of the fund, in the case that more than 10% wanted to sell, then the fund would be frozen. The fund then ignored this rule and borrowed money to reimburse these fundholders. It was obvious that the fund had experienced unrealistic revaluations over the years and was facing a crisis in the face of the property market.

Interestingly Santander branches then informed their small clients to sell their holdings. This resulted in 80% attempting to do so. The fund was then frozen due to lack of liquidity. This left 42,000 fundholders with their assets ( often their life savings) inaccessable. If you can imagine the recent Barclays mis-selling but much worse you have a picture. The Spanish media has totally suppressed this story as Emilio Botin, the Chairman of Santander has a strong influence over the both government and the media. One of Spain’s leading media companies is heavily indebted to Santander.

Santander is used to getting away with murder so let’s see if the FSA will stand up to them

There are different of types of mortgage available which are designed to meet individual requirements. Much depends on the type of mortgage you have now, and what would be the most appropriate for your impending changed circumstances. Lorna Bourke of Citywire has written several articles on the subject, but as far as I am aware she does not comment on individual cases. Your best bet would be to explain the dilema to the forum of Martin Lewis's free financial advice website. www.moneysavingexpert.com It may turn out that a recommendation to switch to another mortgage lender with an adaptable product could ameliorate the problem.

My previous comment was for anonymous 4

This "disappearing £100 bonus" effect is not just Santander, I experienced the same thing with 1st Direct and would not recommend anyone to join that bank who also charged me an overdraft fee having rung me up to tell me they weren't!

People are so guillibel, all of you should make a complaint to the financial ombudsman, and it does not cost you a bean, yet you could get a tidy amount of compensation.You can do everything online. Make Santander pay. I did.

It's not really any consolation but things could have been a lot worse.

Google 'Emma Woolf' to see just how bad things can be with Santander! I hope it's ok to give a short quote from Andrew Ellson's comment in the Times on 21st May to give a taste of it:

From the Times Online:

'As Personal Finance Editor of The Times I see so many examples of the greed, incompetence and penny-pinching of banks that I have slowly become immune to the awfulness of it all. But in six years of writing about the banks I have never known any institution treat a customer worse than the way Santander has treated Emma Woolf. Not only did Ms Woolf have to suffer the dire consequences of the bank’s refusal to refund £10,000 fraudulently taken from her account, but she also had to listen to Santander besmirch the good name of her fiancé by its repeated suggestion that he was responsible for the crime.

Only when a Santander employee was arrested for fraud did the bank relent, and only after trying to cover up the whole sorry saga. The bank has never even apologised. But perhaps the worst part of the story is that Ms Woolf’s experience does not appear to be unique'

I have had both current, business and savings accounts with RBS for many years without any problems. I have now been informed that my account will be taken over by Santander. The letter I received from RBS informs me that the sale of the RBS branches includes all the accounts held by those branches.

I know the circumstances surrounding the sell off of the RBS branches, but who gave them the right to "sell off" my accounts to the most unwelcome buyer, without any say or choice in the matter?

There is absolutely no way that Santander is going to see any of my money. Personal experience and that of family and friends will ensure that. It seems that more and more of the finacial operations on the high street are being sold off to the worst bank there is. Time to say enough is enough

Someone sent me just over £800. It never arrived. I phoned Satan-der and was told it was the other bank, RBS's problem. I could not phone them but the payer did and they told her it was Satan-der's problem. Satan-der demanded that RBS trace the payment, which they did, and lo-and-behold, the payment had gone all the way to my account. I told Satan-der but they said if it wasn't showing on my statement it hadn't arrived and RBS must take ownership of the problem. RBS said they had done a full trace and the funds had definitely got as far as my account. RBS then took the trouble to talk to Satan-der who continued to stone-wall them. Eventually, presumably through appropriate escalation, Satan-der found that there had been a "technical problem". Needless to say, the bank-from-hell have not contacted me, let alone apologised.

Time to change banks.