Has been OK, but can no longer recommend.

We opened a Santander business account 5 years ago. We have simple banking needs (no cash, hardly any cheques, just online payments). For this it's all worked smoothly enough. When I have had a query, it's generally been answered OK.

That changed this year. OK - I've made some allowance for delays many companies experienced this year and got used to waiting a 2-3 days for an answer, but the problems are bigger than that.

We were trying to get an answer about an issue which did not involve any detailed account or transaction information. Sent a secure messagem, but I was directed to their phone service instead. That took ten minutes to get through all the while recorded messages trying to get me to go to use Secure Messaging or the website. When I did get through to someone, it was an answer that could have been given by secure message.

Tried to follow up on that and just got another response telling me to call instead. Couldn't even reply this time as they have now terminated the secure message service altogether. So now you have to use online chat. I don't mind online chat, but of course, it's chatting with a bot which means when you have something that's not run of the mill you're expected to jump through hoops before you can get near a person.

Then there's no way to continue that dialogue if the issue is not resolved on one chat - you start from scratch again.

Frankly, this poor level of service does not justify the monthly fee which is slightly higher than other banks.