Bradford & Bingley Building Society

I invested money with Bradford & Bingley as they offered a fantastic rate (2008). I have since invested elsewhere as B & Bno longer exist as it is Santander.

I really miss B & B.

This bank refuses to close my account unless I provide information going back twenty years. This is under the guise of 'Anti-laundering' although nothing has changed in twenty years except the EU Directive. Bradford & Bingley Building Society has retained our living money and refuses to release it to another bank account on the UK mainland.This is bureaucracy gone mad and another avenue for the EU and Governments to exploit for individual, personal information.

Every contact with the Bradford and Bingley, whether by phone or in branch or by email has been exceptional. Every staff member in the branch seem to know me by name and always make me feel very welcome. They have gone out of their way to give good advice, to give me plenty of time and to make the branch surroundings comfortable. I would thoroughly recommend this building society to anyone. What more can I say - fantastic service from a very friendly bunch of staff but also when I have needed to phone or get information online that has been excellent too.

We opened a Bradford and Bingley eSavings account to put money in following our house sale. Which we did.

We then subsequently emigrated to Australia and I dutifully phoned them to change address. I was told that in the Terms and Conditions (small unreadable print) for the account I had to be resident in the UK to operate it. Fair enough (daft, but fair enough if they want it that way). So I phoned them to ask what I should do. I was advised that I should open a 'Offshore' B&B eSavings account and put the money in that; again, fair enough and good advice.

So, I took further advice from my Financial Advisor here in Oz who said the money should be in my Wife ' s name for Tax Purposes. I phoned B&B and asked if I would be able to transfer the money to my wife's B&B 'Offshore' eSavings account. I was told yes, that would not be a problem. Great - all very helpful (except it turns out to be wholly inaccurate!)

We opened the B&B offshore eSavings account in my wife ' s name and the fun started. In my eSavings account I couldn ' t set the offshore account as the 'designated' account to transfer the money to.

For 6 months I kept telling Bradford & Bingley what our situation was and what we wanted to do. For 6 months I received 'Customer Services' emails with solutions that were not an option. I tried phoning and explaining the situation but each time the (very pleasant & helpful) operator would explain what I needed to do. Each time I would receive emails telling me I was unable to do that. Finally I was told they would send me a cheque! I explained to them that sending a very large quantity of money, internationally, by cheque was both very insecure and pointless as there is nothing I can do with the cheque (they use $ here, not £) - the only two sterling accounts we have are my one with B&B eSaving and my Wifes with B&B Offshore eSaving.

I phoned them to ask why it was practical sending a cheque for hundreds of thousands of pounds, by post, internationally.

After more calls, I finally managed to speak to someone who said they were on the management team.

Now, for whatever reason I had got into this pickle you would have thought someone with a Business mind would have thought 'we are in danger of losing this customer', what can we do to keep him.

I have been with the Bradford & Bingley for over 20yrs and have always had excellent service from them. But since Sept 04 things have changed. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact they changed to a bank? My discounted rate ended in Mid September and I sought a new mortgage. To this day I still have not completed on the transaction. Considering that this is a remortgage it should have only taken about 3 weeks especially as the loan is for less than 30% of the value of my property! Firstly the original person we dealt with was sacked and then the person who took over worked out a six week leaving period!! Then I was given the wrong name, so the credit search was inavalid. Ever since things do not seem to happen, it just seems that there is no cohesion between the B&B and Birmingham Midshires. It also doesn't help that there's another review saying how bad BM have been to deal with.