To publicly denounce Santander as evil scumbags?

I had an awful time with them too; vastly excessive bank charges, not amending important personal details (like my address!), removing my overdraft facility with no warning which caused all sorts of problems. Absolute tossers, was a very happy day when I could shut down that account.

Dreadful bank. DH had set up enduring power of attourney for his mother. When the time came that he needed to use it (she has bits of savings spread around): NS&I no problem; building societies which still are proper building societies, no problem; other banks mostly not too bad; Halifax a bit awkward; Santander - bloody obstructive idiots. They wanted her to come into the branch to sign a form. The whole point of the POA was that following a stroke she couldn't sign her name let alone get to a branch. But they insisted on a signature. Eventually with much effort she managed a scrawl nothing like her normal writing and that was deemed ok - just some idiotic box-ticking exercise.

When we were transferring some ISA funds this year and asked how long it ishould take, the chap said, 'oh, usually only a day or so...unless its coming from Santander of course'.(fortunately not. wouldn't touch with bargepole!)

Are Santander the ones who have taken over Royal Bank of Scotland?

We had a terrible time from them when my MIL died, because we refused to open an account with them it took them months to close her account, whilst telling usmthatif we would open an amount it could be sorted out same day. Fecking tossers

They are right bastards! We had a massive overdraft (agreed) with them, and one day they withdrew without notifying us at all. We were notified by a utility company that a direct debit had been unpaid, and found out on investigating that that they had withdrawn the facility and wanted over £1000 back straight away. Also resulted in lots of overdraft charges, of course, for the time we were unaware it was no longer authorised. Knobs.

They are god awful. I nearly took out a mortgage with them a few years ago and it required me taking out a current account. before I had agreed to the mortgage they had moved all my direct debits over from my existing bank and caused me over £1k in unpaid bill charges.

I got it all back, but it took me ages to sort it and close the account, Thieving scummers.

They sound like complete crooks. Can't believe they are the ones taking over RBS.

That's their standard policy. You ask to close an account, they say it needs to stay open because a charge has to go through. They give you the date. So once it's gone through you go back and try to close it. Then there's another charge due to go through so you can't close it until x date. Repeat. My DH managed to close the account in the end by getting the manager and threatening to contact the chief exec, financial ombudsman etc

One staff member told my DH they had an account they couldn't close!

Everyone I know who had accounts with Alliance & Leicester has moved since Santander took over - or at least tried to!

Thanks the next call I get I will threaten fos :)

yes - they get charged £400 for each complaint made to fos so it is worth them resolving - I would anticipate fos would rule that you pay £7.20 assuming it was a valid fee and they refund the remaining balance and I would ask that the delinquency displayed on your credit file is amended.

As a previous poster said F O S Financial Ombudsman Service. Just the mention that you are taking the matter to the FOS should bring instant results.

I had a lot of problems closing an account of my father's after he died. According to the wisdom of Santander staff, a grant of probate - which is a court order - was not sufficient for Santander to release the funds to the executor.

They also wanted me to take their own documents to a solicitor and pay fees to the solicitor for witnessing my signature (completely unnecessary)

I wrote an AIBU about it a few months ago and got plenty of responses from other hacked off Santander customers.

I shall never bank any of my money with Santander even though savings rates there often seem appealing.

Your are too late, that information (that they are evil scumbags) is already in the public domain.

Financial Ombudsman's website

Make a written complaint according to the ombudsman's rules on this. Then get onto the ombudsman if no joy.

Phone complaints only get so far. Get it in writing.

From the Google Law Centre, it looks as if it's a good idea to state in the letter to them that you consider the charges on the account to be in dispute. However, I have no idea if that has any legal validity.

Not read the other thread but I had a bit of PPI rebate so paid the bastards off and I am still getting phone calls form the muppet on the phone to tell me that infact I owe nothing grrrrrr

Have you raised a complaint? Get them to listen back to the call where you were told the closing balance etc- if any fees were to be applied to the account you should have been told then surely? This is the second twatty Santander experience on MN tonight!

There is another thread about Santander tonight.

here

It sounds remarkably similar.