Don’t bank with Abbey
After many years banking with Abbey, the Other Half and I have decided to move our money elsewhere—once we manage to extract it from their clutches.
Our problems began on Friday, 14 August when Abbey noticed fraudulent activity on our account and blocked it.
In the past, someone from Abbey would have phoned, told us about the problem, told us what we needed to do, and organised for us to visit a local branch to have the issue resolved.
Not this time.
Abbey failed to alert us, so the first we knew was when we tried to pay for diesel on 13 August and both our cards were rejected. We tried to phone Abbey from our mobile, but their long-winded voice mail menus meant we ran out of credit and, of course, could not pay for more as our cards had been stopped.
Once we’d returned home, we phoned Abbey from the landline and began our expedition through the bank’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.
The first call to Abbey was dropped by the operator. The next saw us told that the Fraud Office was not open at the weekend and we’d have to visit our nearest branch to resolve the situation. (Our nearest branch is in Aberdeen, more than an hour’s drive from where we live just outside Insch, Aberdeenshire.)
Later on the 13th, Abbey’s automated computer system phoned us and told us to call a new number. We did and found ourselves talking to the Fraud Office, which was manned at the weekend. This operator told us we’d need new accounts and this would be organised at the branch.
The Other Half took the morning off work on Monday, 15 August, and we traipsed off to the branch.
There we had to deal with the problem standing at the teller desk, in front of queues of interested people, while the teller made furtive calls to “head office”.
The teller was disinterested at best, contradicted the advice given by the call centres, and told us someone would be in touch. (We did manage to withdraw £250 but that’s all the money we’ve had from the bank since this all started.)
Since then, we’ve dealt with Abbey staff in the Fraud Office, the Complaints Department, and the Customer Service Centre. No one seems able to agree what can be done or when, and no one seems greatly bothered by the difficulties we experience when we don’t have access to our money.
On Wednesday, 2 September, I spoke to someone in the Complaints Department who, in turn, spoke to someone named Chris before relaying two alternatives to us:
- Have the block on the accounts lifted but accept all liability for any fraud committed on the account. In other words, if we get ripped off it’s not Abbey’s problem.
- Wait four weeks for new accounts. In other words, do without money for a further month on top of the 20 days we’ve experienced so far,
Neither alternative is acceptable.
We have friends who use other banks. They’ve had new accounts and cards within three working days of suspicious activity being detected.
We can’t even shift our business to those other banks as Abbey has blocked access to our accounts.
Of course, Abbey and its parent Santander are banking leviathans while we’re just minnows to be swept aside—or so Abbey’s staff seem to think.
Well, we shall see about that and see if minnows can turn into piranhas…
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Archive of posts:
Another stuff up with Abbey (8 September)
Abbey still causing problems (September 2)
Tweet, tweet (August 28)
Still no progress with Abbey (25 August)
Denied access to our money (15 August)
CityWire’s coverage…
http://www.citywire.co.uk/personal/-/blogs/money-blog/content.aspx?ID=356503
Yeah, all this resonates with me, and am ploughing through all the bureaucracy, operators being rude and aggressive and hanging up on me etc. right now. The ombudsman will be the next step.
Best wishes
Beryl