I should have called them previously to tell them I was traveling to be 100% sure they wouldn’t do this.

Nope that won’t work either. Clearleft is with Abbey too, and we’re forever having problems with cards being declined. Just this week, my card was declined 3 times for the same transaction – a flight purchase from American Airlines.

My fourth phone call to Abbey finally reached a person who seem to know vaguely what he was were doing. It turns out that Abbey thought I was still in the US (at SxSW), which meant I wasn’t able to make a transaction in the UK, despite phoning up three times, going through the security measures and supposedly unblocking the card. This fourth phone call did successfully remove the block and I finally managed to buy the tickets. But it took over an hour in total (and that doesn’t including phoning AA three times).

At the end of the fourth phone call, I pointed out to the guy that I travel a lot, and I asked whether I could phone up in advance with the country and dates of my travel plans, to prevent my card being blocked in the US and then again in the UK. Basically he said it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference and my card would continue to be blocked every time I travelled and returned home, regardless of whether the bank knew of my travel plans or not. Idiots.

Frankly all the false positives we get – my card is blocked at least once a month due to travel or online transactions – makes me wonder whether they are actually capable of catching of the genuinely fraudulent transactions.

I have been with Abbey for over 20 years. They were always relatively progressive for a small bank. You could pay money in or take money out without paper way before any other bank. Good statements and reasonable e banking. Now what is going on. Computer says manyna!

I had to cancel my debit card. So Santander sent the card but not the new pin. 7 days for the card plus another 7 for the pin. I cant speak to them on the phone until I get my tel banking number which they forgot to reissue and have only just got that ordered. Now wheres my ebanking details. Sorry you have to wait 15 day for that. WHAT!!!! Does the Santander ebanking facility have a siesta??

The irony of sponsoring F1…..Lewis what happened last year….bit slower….could it have been the sponsorship slowing you down.

Soon Santander it will be “Adios amigos”. Loving my new HSBC business account and personal account manager. Looks like Barclays or Natwest will get my current account.

These nice people that used to work for Abbey National, just don’t seem to have the necessary discretion/authority/ability any more to sort anything out, nor access to anyone who has.
You can see and feel their frustration, at not being able to offer any more than platitudes, which wind their customer up yet further.

To get anything sorted out usually has to be done by telephone, ‘though you can never speak to the person ‘dealing’ with your complaint until they call you (or rather write to you telling you how you weren’t available when they called ) and that nevertheless they hope you feel that they have done all they can to deal with your enquiry effectively, having still Done Nothing to actually resolve the problem. Very good at talking to customers, while not able to Do anything to actually solve the problem(s).
… And now the last remnant of that once proud & ever so efficient institution, the name itself, is set to dissappear…. Which is probably just as well, so that we no longer hold on to that illusion, of still having what they once were.