Is Santander the worst bank ever?

[spinduffy]

I’ve been with Santander for years- personal, joint, mortgage, savings and business account. I transferred money from business account to an investment bank on Wednesday. This was declined and my account blocked. I spoke to someone on Wednesday and was told they would call me back. They didn’t. I called them and have now been on the phone for 1 hour and 43 minutes and am in tears. They are telling me I need to go into Branch. I work as hospital doctor and have no nearby branch. It is pure madness. I will obviously vote with my feet and move banks (apart from mortgage as on a 5 year fixed deal), but U.K. just feeling sorry for myself and feel I’ve been treated pretty badly for a customer of 20 years. I’ve also missed my wedding anniversary meAl which was booked for 7pm and I’m still on the call

I used to work for a company that banked through Santander and they were a nightmare to deal with

Also don’t be too hard on yourself for crying OP. There's no shame in it.

HSBC is the worst bank of all!!!!!!! Don't go to them OP. Save yourself!

YANBU
Rang them last week for advice re: mortgage / going to interest only payments temporarily for 6 months as DH will be in hospital as recently diagnosed with cancer and they were so rude / dismissive
I couldn't believe it

Those bastards wrote to my husband to say x amount had been paid into our joint account and was he aware of it

Ffs it is a joint account.
Closed the account and went to another, hopefully non sexist bank

I asked Santander for £20 in pound coins because I needed them to pay for parking near my work.

They said that they they only had £11 in pound coins.

What kind of bank only has £11 in pound coins?

😂 That's hilarious

Outing myself here but I work for them (coming up to 25 years service) unfortunately if security not passed or suspected fraud then they'll ask for you to produce id in branch which is put on system.

currently all our job roles changing from July branches close at 3pm in week and lunchtime saturday but all staff in branches have to be trained to take inbound call centre calls so although doesnt help now they are working on reducing wait times but even in branch if we call fraud line we can be waiting over an hour as just so busy.

on the whole business bank accounts cannot be serviced in branch (exception being a 123 business account) so branch cannot close the account for you its done via the business banking team secure chat/specialised telephone number however until the block is sorted with ID issue you will not be able to xloae the account as no staff can remove and override that block

We don't have coin delivery as we don't offer a business change service so only coin in branch is that other customers pay in so can happen if it happens someone else been in before and requested the change that was in branch

Does this not strike you as a very customer-unfriendly service? Surely any large bank should be able to change notes into coins and vice versa. I just don't understand how this is a good policy

Yes
Yanbu
So many friends have had problems with Santander poor customer services that I begged my eldest son not to go with them but to take another student deal .

Agreed

@eandh that is very helpful. Do you mind me asking how they expect people who work full time to get in branch? The first 45 mins of my call was waiting to speak with adviser who then said security should be able to override it and put me through taking another 1 hr. Why put me through to security if they knew they wouldn’t be able to help? They knew I was really stressed. Can I transfer my business bank account directly to another provider? I would imagine that given how Santander treat their customers, it couldn’t be much for employees x

Awful as they have been to you and others, I doubt they are the worst. Sadly a race to the bottom in terms of personal banking, with a few exceptions. When some banks were bailed out by the taxpayer, there was a missed opportunity to insist that in return, branch coverage and certain other aspects of service were maintained.

One thing would have been opening hours, which banks have used Covid as an excuse to reduce for good.

Never had a problem with them myself.

I have to say I've been with them over 10 years and never had a problem.
A few years ago my card was hacked online and about £800 taken, they were really helpful then.

I don’t know why more people don’t use building societies rather than banks.

As far as I know, you can't just transfer a business bank account.

You will have to set up a new business bank account first.

I'm so sad reading this what a horrendous experience your poor Mum

Santander was a building society when I first banked with them 30 years ago, it was called Abbey National,

lve never had any problems that couldn’t be sorted out in the branch however covid has caused uproar and Santander have reduced actual bank opening hours and have less staff on site.

our local one now doesn’t open on a Saturday and is only open for 5 hrs Each day Mon-fri. Not much use for people working full time,

I absolutely hate Santander, left as soon as I could

Sounds awful. I'm with Santander though and have never had any problems with them.
Lloyd's on the other hand were absolutely crap. The icing on the cake was when they lost the deeds to my grandfather in laws house. They kept insisting he must have taken them out of his safety deposit box before he died.
Lloyd's finally found them 3 years later in the wrong safety deposit box!

Nationwide is pretty good I think. Doesn't do business banking though.

No Barclays are the worst uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.barclays.co.uk

These big banks don't bother with customer service (look how they don't even reply to excoriating reviews)

Until people vote with their feet nothing will change!