Oh dear.....glad to see I'm not alone (Abbey National)

Member Name: cdsmiler81

Product:	Abbey National
Date:	16/09/09 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The foreign call centre are actually good at what they do! More than can be said for the British one

Disadvantages: Just read the review....

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I'm glad to see I'm not alone.

I've been a customer with Abbey for many years now. My father has been with them for years and never had any problems, so I decided to open my main account with them also. I too, for years, had no problems. Until the past few months.

To make a long story short, there had been some fraudulent activity on my account. I've never been fantastic with money, but even I knew that a week after getting paid my card should not have been refused! So on inspection I discovered that cheques - cheques I had not written myself and weren't out of my current book - had been cashed and over £350 had been taken from my account leaving me with nothing.

My initial call to customer services late on a Saturday resulted in me talking to a foreign gentleman who was incredibly helpful and cancelled all other cheques from this mysterious outstanding chequebook.

Now then, a bit of back ground. I got married back in September 08 and on return from honeymoon in October, I changed my name with Abbey. A cheque book was sent out, but never arrived. I reported this, they cancelled it, and a new one was sent out in it's place. Well, my initial thought was that it was THIS cheque book someone had gotten hold of - that it hadn't been cancelled. I was wrong in this, but it took almost 3 weeks for me to discover this! I'm normally meticulous with disposing of cheque books so this is all still a mystery to me - but I will expand on this later on.

Anyway, I digress. I called the fraud department on the Monday morning (since they don't work weekends) and spoke to a british lady who obviously did not want to be in work and treated me as if I was the criminal in all this. I felt deflated and as if I'd had very little help from her by the time my phone call ended. However, she had apparently passed on my details to the relevant people and a fraud case was set up. I asked if I could see a copy of the two cheques that had been cashed and queried as to whether or not Abbey would send me these as standard. Oh, no, they don't do that. I have to request them myself. From her? No, not the fraud department - of course not, how SILLY of me. No, I had to phone back customer services. I did, spoke to a foreign gentleman who first asked me to pay for copies of the cheques, but on explaining the situation to him he was very helpful and arranged for them to be sent out for free.

In the meantime, I was penniless. I still had a car payment to go out in the month, not to mention any petrol costs or food shopping. So I visited my local branch to see if they could help. The only thing they could do was extend my overdraft by £200. I asked if there was any possible way that it could be extended by the £350 that had been stolen so I could continue to live as usual for the month - I even suggested that as SOON as the money got put back into my account that the overdraft be taken back off me. But no. In fact I only survived the month due to a loan from my parents to cover the illegally taken amount. I was lucky - many people may have had to taken out a loan from another company, some of which are far more respectable than others! It's a shame Abbey weren't happy to support a loyal customer during their hour of need.

Less than two weeks later I received a letter from the fraud department saying yes, it was fraud, and they would give me the stolen money back. Now here's the most hysterical part of the letter. Bear in mind that the fraud was conducted through cheques....imagine if you will the information that normally goes into a cheque. Got it? Good. The letter stated that they did not know how the fraudster got hold of my details (they obviously got hold of a cheque book!) but they knew where the money had gone. Excuse me? This is the skill of your fraud team Abbey?? Surely any person with half a brain could work out where the money had gone simply by looking at the cheque and seeing who it was made out to!! Oh dear.

Almost a week and half later, the copies of the two incriminating cheques arrived. Two things stunned me. Not only were the cheques in my maiden name (we're talking 10 months after I had changed my name with the bank) but they were DATED only a month previously. Now, I understand that cheques can be in the system for a certain length of time - it used to be 6 months but now with the Abbey it's 12 months - so you can write a cheque for someone and they have the freedom of 12 months to cash it if they wish. Fair enough. But these cheques were clearly written recently, in my maiden name, and the signatures were nothing like mine! Now, I perfectly understand that you can put any banks cheque into any other bank - and it would be physically impossible for the other bank to cheque account details and signatures for every Tom, Dick and Harry's cheques that come through. But surely, before Abbey authorised money to leave my bank, there should have been some sort of red light flashing saying that not only is the name itself WRONG (forget the signature for a minute!), but that they had been written really recently?

They're quick enough to allow a cheque to bounce when there's no money, or to slap charges on yu left right and centre...surely this is a similar system?!

Since this fiasco, Abbey have set up a new bank account for me, which was arranged by the 'Switcher' team. I can only conclude that there must be two switcher teams in Abbey - one British based who have NO IDEA what they are doing (didn't know how to deal with a fraud related switch over, didn't know who to ask, and were in fact PSYCHIC as I was told by one man that 'No there's not new account been set up for you' BEFORE he even knew my account details or done a security check!!!), and another foreign based (who knew exactly what was going on, were helpful, informative, accurate and even set up my internet banking for me without me having to phone up another department!). Amazing that the foreign call centre were so much more helpful, polite and informed than the british lot. No wonder companies are setting up so many call centres abroad!!

This is really the tip of the iceberg with regards to this whole issue, but I've listed the worst points. I've sent a complain letter to Abbey regarding the whole system - I doubt I'll get a response. If I don't, I WILL be taking it further.

On a sub issue - I was in my local branch the other day and a lady came in querying her missing Santander credit card. Apparantly it never arrived at home, and Santander arranged for another card to be sent to the local branch instead. Well, if she did.... one of the cashiers - NOT the one who was dealing with this poor lady, but one on the other side of the branch - shouted over saying that she MUST be wrong as that would NEVER happen. This exchanged lasted a minute or two more (the poor customer just explaining that that was what she was told by Santander so what else is she supposed to believe, while the cashier continued in a rather rude way to shout accross that she was wrong) until the poor woman asked the cashier NOT to shout her business accross the branch. In response to this, the cashier replied in the most sarcastic manner: "Sorry. I was only trying to help!!". Sheesh.

I do wonder if Santander is causing more harm than good, as like others have commented on, the customer service has plummeted recently! Coincidence? I think not.

As soon as I am able, I'll be switching to a different bank.

Summary: Abbey customer service is sinking - get out while you can.