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Santander ‘meltdown’ under wave of complaints
Business Digest: Bank director apologises after ‘period of growth’ leads to poor service
The director of service quality and complaints at Santander, Steve Williams, apologised in yesterday's Mail on Sunday to British customers who have come forward with a litany of complaints about service at the Spanish-owned bank which took over Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester.
According to the Mail, the bank is in "administrative meltdown", receiving about 1,300 complaints every day.
Horror stories include that of a 58-year-old civil servant who was declined a credit card by Tesco because Santander - with whom he has his current account - insisted he was dead.
He had already been trying for two months to get Santander to authorise Experian to remove the false 'death mark' from his file when he was finally told "someone was looking at his complaint" - but that it might take another eight weeks to correct.
In answer to this and countless other stories, Williams said Santander was a fast-growing bank and that this period of growth had "regrettably led to some customers not receiving the service we expect". He said 600 extra staff were being hired to man branches and call centres in an effort to improve service.
Read a full report at the Mail on Sunday
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I needed an urgent transfer sent to me in Thailand. Santander informed me that i had to send a fax with my id (who still uses fax?) which I sent.
After 4 days and numerous phone calls the transfer was not sent. When i called the customer service and complaints department, todl me they did not have a number for the internmational transfer department and could only send them an email (so they do use email) I asked them to confirm receipt of my fax and they could not. They refused to give me their email address.
It's now day 7, no transfer, and i called again only to be told the same old story.
All i want is a phone number to verify that my fax was received and when the international transfer will be sent. And no one at Santander can do this.
i will speak to my lawyer on my return then move my bank account. This is shocking service!
As an ABBEY customer of almost 2 decades, I have observed the detoriorating service at my local branch with dismay. It is of little comfort to know that many customers are suffering the same fate, and that Santander are aware that improvements are needed and soon. A great difference from here in the USA where customers are surprisingly helpless in the face of disastrously poor customer service from their banks.Not having a banking OMBUDSMAN does not help the situation.