Santander

Dreadful from start to finish. Switched to them with a requested switch date of 23-9-22. This was postponned until 4 October due to the 1 DAY bank holiday on the 19 September due to the funeral despite the fact that this was announced (10 Sept) before I even requested the switch. The bank account opened on the 14 September. They then re-instated a standing order I cancelled and blamed HSBC. They then had the absolute cheek to charge me the £2 account fee as the account had been open for 1 month (although completely unusable for most of that time).

Dreadful customer service.

Avoid the free cash isnt worth the incompetence

Santander’s core values of incompetence, inefficiency and unhelpfulness (current Santander Trust Pilot rating 1.4 out of 5) are followed to the letter by their Stratford branch.

In November 2021 I had to travel across London to the Stratford branch of Santander to meet with a bank representative in person (first available local in person appointment was three months wait, February 2022), allowing them to check in my presence, copy and then file all the documents for my Parent’s LPA. They then lost or mislaid half of the paperwork.

Caring for end of end-of-life parents while having to negotiate Santander’s incompetent bureaucracy was an unnecessary extra stress.

I HAD COVID WITH DELAYED SICK PAY AND PHONING SANTANDER IS ALWAYS A LONG AND ARDUOUS TASK. I WAITED AND LISTENED TO AWFUL MUSIC ON SHORT LOOP FOR 1hr 35mins TO GET CALL PUT THROUGH FOR WHICH THEY ARE UNREPENTANT..

DESPITE AMENDING MY DIRECT DEBIT INSTRUCTIONS ONLINE TO TAKE THE MINIMUM AMOUNT THIS WAS IGNORED AND SANTANDER TOOK THE USUAL OVERPAYMENT AMOUNT INSTEAD. SO IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE DIRECT DEBIT AMOUNT ONLINE APPARENTLY IT TAKES TWO CYCLES/MONTHS FOR THIS TO BE IMPLEMENTED, WITH NO WARNING.

SANTANDER REFUSED TO RETURN THE OVERPAYMENT OR REMEDY THE SITUATION AND THE COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT TOTALLY UNHELPFUL AS WELL.

TIME LOST MAKING TWO PHONE CALLS: 1hr 55mins

OBNOXIOUS PEOPLE = OBNOXIOUS COMPANY.

Obviously, without an updated phone number, you cannot login to Santander UK perosnal banking, either to update the number yourself or to answer the rigidly inflexible security question about latest transaction, which you can't answer because you can't log in to actually see the latest transaction. Catch22 in spades! Been struggling, and failing to get these blaggers to change my phone number since January 19th, more intensively over the last 2 months. Tried phone calls, feedback forms, emails, twitter, PM, DM, complaints, closure forms - NOTHING WORKS ! The closure form is only for business accounts. Santander carefully avoids having a personal account closure form (presumably, individuals are less likely to be able to afford corporate lawyers!) Tried Santander USA but they are tied up paying $300million_ fines for malpractices in loans and personal banking (allegedly). Have dragged Banking Ombudsman into this but have zero optimism (following previous miserably inept interventions in the past, including PPI admitted by santander but bizarrely excused by the ombudsman!) How this bunch survives is beyond me (and 10,000's of other distressed and harassed customers across the Western hemisphere!

I went into Santander Stockport today and as always I was greeted with a warm welcome and again as always, the counter staff were friendly and helpful nothing is ever to much trouble for them everything done with a genuine smile not fake.

It seems people only put reviews on when things go wrong so let's have some when things go right and get positive as well as negative reviews instead of it being onesided all the time.

On January 3rd, 2020 we transferred USD$ from Guatemala to an account at Santander Bank Polska S.A. The transfer was from the US Dollar account to Euro account so there was only one currency conversion. The Santander Bank Polska S.A. applied an incorrect exchange rate. Instead of 0.9 it used 0.83. As a result 600 USD$ was lost in the transaction. We discovered the error and asked the bank to adjust the amount. In response we were told that “complaints are dealt with as soon as possible (…) up to maximum 60 days.”

The bank took nearly 7% of the total transaction value. While, the Santander Bank Polska S.A. needs one month to “investigate”, the Guatemalan bank was able to give an overview of the transaction within 15 minutes. The information proved that there were no extra charges by the Guatemalan bank or (intermediary) American Bank Wells Fargo. The missing 600 USDS$ is in the bizarre exchange rate.

It is hard to believe that the Santander Bank Polska S.A. would take money needed for a surgery send by a daughter to a small personal account of elderly mother. Taking a plane and delivering this money in person would cost about the same.

Meantime my mother received an anonymous SMS from Santander Bank Polska S.A. wishing happy birthday and advising to be patient.

Worst customer service I have ever received in my entire life.

A bunch of incompetent losers who are for some reason unable to do as much as send me a new card after the old one expired (ordered 3 of them never arrived to my address although verified with them 3 times and its not a communal mailbox/one of them arrived to a random branch I don't have easy access to, and one of them arrived to my old branch & when I got there it wasn't there - btw still don't have the card as of this moment 3 months after expiry!!). The cherry on top was when the bank blocked my access to online banking (still don't exactly know why?) and again it seems impossible to send me the new security details via post (so far only received 1 of 2 letters as the one went missing somewhere apparently? so patiently waiting for the 2nd batch to get lost somewhere in the universe or being delivered to random places?!?! fingers crossed lol).

This situation has effectively left me with no access whatsoever to my account & money and I can only retrieve £300 in cash in branch with my ID while being look down upon and really not being treated very nicely (softly spoken). So far I have only experienced a complete lack of professionalism and human, understanding approach and have been treated like dirt when really I've done nothing wrong. Nobody seem to really want to help you although they're the ones causing all the mess in the first place. So far I haven't heard one apology about all the inconvenience caused (and that it is hell of an inconvenience not having access to my main account !!! !) Being utterly appalled by this experience is an understatement.

The minute I have access to my account/money (even if it means I have to go down to a branch every day to retrieve £300 in cash at a time) I am closing down the account and never looking back as I don't want to have anything to do with this caricature of a bank ever again. Please for your own sake avoid at all costs.

Unable to close checking account without incurring $35.00 overdraft fees for overdraft protection with a zero balance. If you don't disable the overdraft protection on the closed checking account will you will incur $12.00 sweep fee, to pay for the $35.00 overdraft fee.

I have had an account with Santander for a number of years which had my savings of £20,000 plus as it returned 1.5% interest as long as I fulfilled a couple of conditions. Unknown to me one of the direct debits needed had expired which meant I was receiving nothing at all in fact I was paying Santander a monthly fee of £5 use my money. I called them today and explained that the company that I had the DD with didn't know why the DD had expired and Santander also said they didn't know why it happened either. The customer service person at Santander just parroted that "it's all in the terms and conditions and that it was up to me to keep on top of my account". Is it beyond the wit of a conglomerate to identify when an account that has been receiving interest every month for a number of years suddenly stops and to contact their CUSTOMER to give them some SERVICE? Is that not the customer service that I pay for every month? On top of this issue I had a full service review of my finances earlier this year, over 2 hours with a senior banking official, and this anomaly was not identified then. It beggars belief that I am paying Santander every month to use my money to lend others, at whatever rate they see fit but when I identify a problem "it's all in the terms and conditions". Extremely poor stuff, steer clear as I will in due course.

Had to call customer service more than 3 times for the same issue. Most of the time I was put on a long hold. All I wanted to do was to change my address to my current one. I could not get that done online so they said I had to fill a change of address form and send the copy via mail. The back and forth for this simple issue was a bit more than necessary. I am still unclear as to whether or not my new address has been updated by the bank because one minute they say my address has been updated and the next, they say sorry but your address could not be updated. I am tired of the whole process for such a simple fix.