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I have a loan, credit card, current and savings account. Never ever had a problem, it would appear I am in a minority!!!
Ordered a new card using telephone service in December 07 - I didnt actually receive the card until end of March 08 due to the fact they were sending out cards and pin numbers to my old address even though I had changed it in the branch and checked the address with them in December. Terrible system, rude staff who were dealing with my complaint.
I opened an account and for 2 years i didnt have a problem at all.i found them very helpful, that was until i turned eighteen. The first thing i got was the junk swamping through the door about credit cards the lot basicly which is what most banks do to advertise anyway. i didnt mind but when i then went to the bank to upgrade my account as the card i had was stopping me from paying for things ect they told me i couldnt upgrade. when i asked them why they told me it was because the computer said i wasnt allowed one (that was there exact answer- the computer didnt want me to have one)i then asked why again thinking i had herd them wrong they then said that because for two years i had been putting money in then taking it out i wasnt using my account how it should be used!! can someone please tell me what i was going wrong??she then told me i was only seventeen. i provided my id to prove i was of age and she then said i would have to ring up the call center to change details. i believe she just wanted me to get me pd off even more because when calling them i sat on the phone for 1 hour to have them then hang up on me. i then call again and listen to that opera song for another 30 min to have the person say the systems are down try again tomorrow. i did, systems were down for a week! i then was told system failier had resulted in people using money in there account they had already used and i was one of them but hay..its ok they wernt going to charge me because they were gunna do me a favour thanks! i then opened an account with my partner knowing he wouldnt take any excuses from them, still waiting for my brand new account!! its been 2 months! ive just given up hope! and moved to a different bank!
Abbey left it's millions of customers stranded without money today - 13 August 2007 - as its entire card transaction system was down all day. Abbey customers could not obtain cash from ATMs - either Abbey's or other bank's machines - nor pay for services / goods using their cards. Many people only have an Abbey account - often with an Abbey credit card too, which was also affected in many cases. Abbey put no notice on its website - informing customers of the reason, and a realistic resolution time. When I finally got through to them on the phone - after many attempts, they could not tell me when it was going to be fixed, just apologised for the major but rare problem. Not good enough.
Their customer service is rubbish they either are unwilling to help even if the problems is their fault, hide behind processes, do not escalate problems to managers,hang up or mysteriously 'lose' you in their phone system.
Further to my previous comment I still cannot view recent transactions on my business account or send any payments at all - although I have now found out that with Abbey business banking you can't send any payments between 4m and 6pm as that is when they do their daily update, which is absolutely ridiculous as that is the time of day, at end of business, that I want to send my payments. Abbey keep telling me they will look into my problems but then when I don't hear back from them I call them again and they say their technical team looked at my problem but there is nothing wrong!! They then ask me the same questions again and say they will log the problem. This has gone beyond a joke and I will have to change banks - if I can't view recent transactions then I don't know until the statement by post at the end of the month, who has paid their invoices. I asked one of the call centre staff to read out over the phone my recent transactions but he told me he didn't have time! They tried to blame my computer but I have tried the same thing on 8 different machines now. I am sick to the back teeth of them - they are totally unprofessional and they never phone back when they promise they will. I have spoken to the complaints department (well I think they call it customer service) and each time I am told that the person I am now speaking to will take my concerns seriously and follow them through to make sure they are all sorted out - then I don't hear from them again.
To taffy300. If Abbey have lost your original documents (birth cirtificate, drivers licence, passport etc), then you should be able to pass any costs incured for getting copies of the documents to Abbey. They have a duty of care to look after your documents whilst they are processing your application.
I applied for an Abbey Busines Account Mid December 2006, received confirmation that all information had been received on the 4th January 2007 and the account would be set up within 24 hours. I then called each working day to check the progress only to be told to call back the following day as they had a large back log of new accounts to process.
Today (16th Jan 2007) I received a call from the customer service team to advise that all my application details had been lost in their system so I would need to re-apply. They have also lost my original proof of identity documents.
Abbey Business Banking - Opened an account 8 weeks ago and have not been able to view recent transactions, so far have spent about 10 hours on the phone with them reporting the fault which 'they have never had before'. On my last call to their TECHNICAL TEAM (lasting 45 minutes which I was paying for) they got me to delete all my cookies - in order to get a 'straight edge' - when I challenged this - they said it was OK it would not affect my other logons - Guess what IT DID ! ! so now ALL of my other business and social logons and passwords have disappeared. Stay clear of them - free banking maybe - but hours and hours of downtime trying to deal with their grossly inefficient system and staff
After trying to open an Abbey National business account, they lost all of the paperwork, and then asked me to send more! I did this and it was faxed from one of their own branches, Guess what? they lost this too! how incompetant can a company be? (dont answer that.) They have now informed me, 8 months later , that because I have not responded, they are abandoning my account application!! They have lost banking of approx £380K last year. Still they can make that up by charging when your identity is stolen!!!!but it would not be their fault.
Great! Until you fall into any sort of financial difficulty. Then they will charge you without warning, then charge you for going over your overdraft, then charge you again because they feel like it. Staff in their branches are rude and unsympathetic. Staff in the call centre... don't get me started!
Didn't even seem bothered that my partner has been with them for 30 years and were quite happy for him to change banks.
We have recentlty had a flood in our house. After informing Abbey National our Home Insurance Company for 10 years.
The way we have been treated by this company is ridiculous, we have been left sitting in a damp house with no heating because they still haven't sent an electrician to check our wires, we have had very little response from the company and they have yet to inform us when the work will start after three weeks waiting and still no word
I would not recommend this company to anyone.
Saw the comments re deeds and Abbey National. I am a very unhappy customer who lives in a 16th century property who needed to view my deeds to check a boundry dispute. When contacting Abbey national it took them over 4 weeks and several chasing calls for them to admit they could not find my deeds. They firstly informed me that my solicitor had not returned them over 10 years ago as they wriggled and squirmed and tried to blame everyone else. They also refused to search for them on the grounds that they hold thousands of deeds and to look for one is like a needle in a haystack!!!!! What can you say to that. They did finally agree to reinstate the deeds at their cost like i was ever going to pay! and agreed a smal figure in compensation after a year of me complaining
They tried this with me (although only £80 at that time) but my mortgage was with Provincial, whom Abbey National had taken over. Luckily my lifetime's work has been in contracts and I sudied the mortgage terms closely and discovered that the terms of the mortgage did not allow them to charge for releasing the deeds. I informed them of this and they tried the usual bland put down. Then I wrote a very strong letter condemning them, and they buckled and gave in.
Bear in mind also that if you have paid off your mortgage and your property is a registered property (most are) then the deeds have no value anyway. They are not worth £2 let alone £200. They are basically the mortgagor's protection while you owe them money. As you probably know, their charge is for "looking after the deeds safely for the lifetime of the mortgage". That means they want you to pay them for having looked after documents that protect them, not you.
You should now have your mortgage terms checked out thoroughly (whether it was Abbey National or Provincial) to determine whether the right for them to charge actually exists. If it doesn't then demand the money back, threaten small claims court action if they refuse, and take it to court if they ignore you. Their attempt to charge me was attempted fraud. I had other, serious financial trouble with Abbey National, which I fought against and won. They are the second worst organisation I have ever dealt with (First was Inland Revenue) and I sighed with relief when I eventually got rid of the few Abbey National shares that my father had willed to me.
It is disgraceful that Abbey National charge you £250 to redeem your own deeds and then post them to you by first class post (yes the original deeds)havent they made enough profit with your 25 years of paying your mortgage
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
Today (16th Jan 2007) I received a call from the customer service team to advise that all my application details had been lost in their system so I would need to re-apply. They have also lost my original proof of identity documents.
Very poor service, very poor communications.
Didn't even seem bothered that my partner has been with them for 30 years and were quite happy for him to change banks.
The way we have been treated by this company is ridiculous, we have been left sitting in a damp house with no heating because they still haven't sent an electrician to check our wires, we have had very little response from the company and they have yet to inform us when the work will start after three weeks waiting and still no word
I would not recommend this company to anyone.
Bear in mind also that if you have paid off your mortgage and your property is a registered property (most are) then the deeds have no value anyway. They are not worth £2 let alone £200. They are basically the mortgagor's protection while you owe them money. As you probably know, their charge is for "looking after the deeds safely for the lifetime of the mortgage". That means they want you to pay them for having looked after documents that protect them, not you.
You should now have your mortgage terms checked out thoroughly (whether it was Abbey National or Provincial) to determine whether the right for them to charge actually exists. If it doesn't then demand the money back, threaten small claims court action if they refuse, and take it to court if they ignore you. Their attempt to charge me was attempted fraud. I had other, serious financial trouble with Abbey National, which I fought against and won. They are the second worst organisation I have ever dealt with (First was Inland Revenue) and I sighed with relief when I eventually got rid of the few Abbey National shares that my father had willed to me.
jbco at 21st Sep 2005, 09:35AM
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