i have had internet banking with Alliance and Leicester ever since i have had an account with them. It has caused me anxiety.It gives inaccurate information it turns out, with out of date amounts available to use. When some of the available funds are used to pay for on-line bills it has registered me as going over the agreed overdraft, very confusing giving over to high charges requested from meat the end of the month, to pay. After contacting the company and speaking to reps in connection with the obvious confusing inaccurate info I have been told i will not have to pay the charges requested. Only to find that they had been added to my account and requested I have decided to close my account with the group

Probably the worst bank to deal with.
Despite my account always being in credit the management at the local branch seem to want to be obstructive and make life as difficult as possible. The call centre staff are slightly better but again are not very helpful. Not only could they not easily change my address, each time I went to change it they asked for a different piece of paper. After 3 attempts they eventually altered my address but I was so fed up with them I promptly changed banks.
After being with the bank for over 30 years I switched to another bank and found that they put customer service 1st. The take over of Alliance & Leicester by Santander has meant that the customer service, in my opinion, has deteriorated greatly. My recommendation is to find an alternative bank.

The system is good when it works. If it does not and you have to use there call centre then forget it. Their security is nonsensical. If they block your account you can still access the account but not transfer. They then ask you questions about what you can see on your account. Fine unless you have a poor connection.
The call centre is agressive and does not try to help

My advice is do not bank with Alliance and Leicester or its owner Santander. Communication is difficult, they are slow with transfers and closing accounts cannot be completed on-line

I had to put one star, but minus is actually nearer the point. Do not bank with these people!!

My wages are available for use from the start of trading on 25th of each month. On 25/10/2010 Alliance & Leicester paid, then bounced back £550 which was supposed to go to my landlord. I queried this on the morning of 25/10/2010. I was given an apology. The Alliance & Leicester employee suggested that he should make two 'FASTER PAYMENTS' to my landlord's agent. He did this. However, it is only possible to make one faster payment in a day. Therefore, instead of two payments, one of £300 and one of £250 leaving my account, only one of £300 was paid out. I was told by this employee that the £550 would not be going out.
On 26/10/2010 the Alliance & Leicester paid £550 to the landlord; even though I was informed this would not be going out. Therefore, the Alliance & Leicester overpaid the landlord by £300. I was very upset and asked to be refunded the money. The Alliance and Leicester agreed to repay me the £300. They repaid me.
On 26/10/2010 I tried to journey to France to see my parents. At Dover, I needed to fill my tank with petrol, to be able to continue the journey. My card was declined. After a 21 minute mobile phone call to the Alliance & Leicester I was told that I was using my husband's card; the Alliance & Leicester representative was patronising and asked me to read the name on the card! So I read her my name; as it was my card. She then told me my card had been reported 'lost or stolen'. It had not been. Essentially I was left at a ferry port with no way of getting to my final destination or of getting home.
My internet access was stopped for no reason.
On 29/12/10 I noticed that only £250 and not £550 had been taken from my account to pay my landlord. I phoned the Alliance and Leicester and asked them, 'Why?'. They stated that they, 'Had no idea.' They checked the standing order instruction which was for £550. I asked if £300 could be paid by faster payment to my landlord; considering the problems I experienced in October, I asked the girl to ensure that this was the only payment that would be taken. She paid the £300 on 30/12/10.
Today I noticed that a further £300 has been taken from my account; it comes under the heading, 'Transaction Refund'. I immediately phoned Alliance & Leicester [2pm, I have spent hours on the phone]. After speaking with several different people and getting through to the Complaints Department, I have been told that I should be dealt with in about a week. They have taken £300 from my account with no explanation. I need this money for food and fuel for my family.

The most terrible customer services, I have ever come across in my life.Rude, imcpmpetent and completely unhelpful.
Never anything went smooth with this bank.
Now after 7 year, I have closed all my saving accounts and will also transfer all my banking to First Direct in January.
What a relief.
AVOID THIS BANK.

Alliance and Leicester (Santander) is a travesty. I discovered that my account was blocked without notice, and decided to phone them up. Unusual spending patterns at Christmas? Who would have thought!

After multiple call centre workers pried into my personal and card details, including my three-digit security number which I had to vocally provide during a dubiously-secure phone call, they told me I failed their security test and that therefore they had to end my call. Any attempts to offer more security information were rebuffed by a carbon-copy reading of whatever script those automatons swear by.

They closed by demanding that I go to a branch and bring ID. Shocking how they demand all of your details and do nothing for you in return... except insult you and block you from accessing your money! Let me tell you, when I go to the branch tomorrow, I am unblocking my account - and then closing it.

Enough with the letters dated two weeks late, the replacement PIN numbers lost in the post, and the abysmal customer "service". I'm taking my money back to HSBC. At least HSBC are reliable, even if their interest rates are worse than Alliance and Leicester.

This is the first review I have ever written... and I have an important deadline to meet. Hope you take something from this. Wish this all happened before I opened an ISA account with them last week. I just don't trust them anymore.

Cannot believe how bad this changeover to Santander has been handled. Both my husband and I were unable to see our online accounts for MONTHS and he still cannot see his despite dozens of phone calls, posted letters and e mails. They keep promising to recompense us but neither of us has seen any sign of this - we have it in writing but that is a JOKE. Would NEVER recommend them to anyone, even my worst enemy. As soon as I can find a decent rate somewhere else I will be moving my money.

I Have had endless problems with my account at the Alliance and Leicester including:
Large amount of savings showing as zero balance on internet banking for over 3 months causing me quite some stress!
I lost my wallet and cancelled my cards, nearly 7 weeks later and numerous lengthy phone calls alter and my replacement cards still have not arrived. My Barclays replacement card came within 2 days. They also cancelled my husbands joint account card in error and his replacement cars has also not arrived yet so we are stuck without cards for almost 2 months
Customer service is shockingly bad.

I have a current account and was going to get their esaver issue 2 - they want to know how much money I earn? I was going to move 50K into this account and they want to know what I earn and where I got the money from - its in another bloody A&L account! This isn't a mortgage app, I am putting my money in their bank - they should be telling me what they earn! the online form looks like it has been translated from Spanish - by an online translator.
Shabby

The Alliance and Leicester Bank:

I have banked with this shambolic crowd for around 18 months.

I transferred over to them as they said they could match my overdraft, and free banking, cash incentive etc. After all, they couldn't possibly be as bad as Halifax, could they? (anyone lucky enough to be banking with Halifax will know what I mean.)

After joining them for a few months, they then decided, after me waiting about 4 weeks awaiting their reply, they could not match my overdraft as I'd sent the paperwork in too late! So when I applied to join them there was NO DOUBT they could match my overdraft, but mysteriously after 3 months, its "too late" ah, my fault, obviously. This resulted my credit card payment bouncing, which cost me about £100 in late payment and interest charges. Thanks boys. Still, after asking the people on the end of the phone, they can offer me a £50 overdraft. Woo hoo. As my credit card bill is usually much greater than this it is worse than useless. And there is no one else there I can speak to to discuss this.

As I have £200K on deposit and put around £10K a month income (don't want to sound like I'm bragging just making a point) through the account, this would hardly make me a bad credit risk.

I don't so much blame the call centre staff, its a whole system cleverly designed to keep the poor unsuspecting punter at arms length, which it does very well. try getting past one! Any department who you would really, really need to speak to directly "isn't customer facing" so there's nothing they can do. Maybe you will get an unsigned letter from the "whatever department" denying your request in about a month, if you're lucky.

Anyone thinking of banking with this shower should be aware of the following:

1 Whatever you do, get the account open, WITH the overdraft they promise you in place first, before you transfer all your payments DDs, ballance etc over.

2 Don't close your old bank account or change it in any way, until you sort the above.

3 The online banking is rubbish. It is cumbersome to use and log in, and dangerously, I discovered this the expensive way, if you make a payment it doesn't appear on the online statement instantly, so you can think you haven't made it. I paid a £1200 bill twice by accident thanks to this. Even Halifax can get this right.

4 I has a 9 digit account no for some inexplicable reason! Try telling someone your account no, hours of baffling fun! Do I take the first digit off, the last one, or one in the middle? The rest of the banking universe manages with 8, yes Alliance and Leicester eight. You need to add more SORT CODES (if you need them) not extra digits on the account no. Anyway, do you really have more than 99,999,999 customers? I think not. The population of the UK is only 62 million!

5 The phone banking is dreadful to get into. There is NO WAY to get in to speak to an (almost) human if you don't have the customer ID number and secret pin no. No, not the account number, that's something else you need later. So you need to remember 4 sets of numbers, which will be called slightly different names to try to catch you out. That's sort/account/ID/pin.

6 They change the options order on the phone banking as far as I can tell on an hourly basis, so watch out. Why they have 5+ choices of departments I don't know. They could put you through to the most commonly called one and pass you onto the one you want if not. But that really would be customer service, and simply wouldn't do.

7 The phone banking is worse than useless, when you finally get through, unless you need something really simple.

8 The "high" interest accounts used to lure you in will suddenly drop without notice to 0.00001% after about 6 months.

9 (This is true) You will have to ask 3 times for a tax statement - this takes around 3 months to do. The first time you ask, nothing will happen. There will be no record of you doing this when you enquire why you didn't get it. The second time, they will order it, they will say there had been an order, but you still won't get it. The third time, from customer service go through to customer complaints or whatever its called, who will then deny being able to help you and put you back to customer services, who will then, after starting again, do their bloody job, and order it. Again. At this stage, take their name, (they won't give you a surname) and time you called. This slight extra pressure seems to help. Then put the phone down and find the number for customer complaints. If its on the website its bloody well hidden, I found it on one of the letters apologising for a previous complaint I made about the overdraft... Call them, if you're lucky, someone will apologise and do it.



Finally I am going to try a different bank, where you pay a fee, see if that makes any difference. Free banking = cheap and nasty banking as far as I can tell.

Problems transfering money to pay a bill, password not accepted had to ring to reset.

Waited 20 minutes for assistant, because I asked my husband a question half way though the security questions, I was told we could not proceed.

Next contact will be to close the account

AVOID!!!!!! After being in credit, because I didn't deposit the minimum required for ONE MONTH they charge an under-use fee of £5. Without telling you that you are overdrawn, they THEN charge £5 PER DAY for being overdrawn on a charge that I didn't fairly deserve - SO PLEASE AVOID AND SAVE YOU MONEY! Luckily I am free of them now. Never have I seen such poor service.

Complete and utter amateurs springs to mind. I have NEVER seen such a poorly run/thought out/problematic organisation in my life. I run a business and some of their practises leave me open mouthed in dis-belief i.e. lumping numerous payments through as a single transaction..WHAT!!!!!! How on earth are you able to consolodate for book keeping with that going on. Internet Banking rarely seems to work. Sort codes and account numbers who's format changes depending on which way the wind is blowing. High value transfers that are sent to the wrong bank. Staff that dont know their head offices contact details. SIMPLY EMBARRASINGLY BAD!