Quote: "
I'm with Abbey/Santander and I'm not impressed. They actually have the worst record for customer service..."
Sounds about right - when Abbey became Santander (or...Satan...der!)I've heard plenty of folks I know who are with them complain.
I used to have a Woolwich account, but they merged with Barclays, my Dad used to work for Barclays and he pretty much advised against me keeping my account. It's still open, but it's inactive and I took out the £1.30 that was left in there.
At the moment I'm running with HSBC and I think they're a decent bank. When I went over my overdraft limit, instead of putting deadly charges onto my account (unlike Lloyds TSB did with a friend or my brother with Santander) they phoned me up and sought the best possible solution as to not hurt my credit rating or give me unnecessary charges.
A friend who was with Loyds TSB went in because he needed an extension on his overdraft limit, all he needed was his bank card, 5 minutes, no questions and they did it for him.
HSBC on the other hand, when I went in, they sat me down at one of their desks, asked a few questions and went through my credit rating (which was good), but I was denied my overdraft by their system, when I asked 'why?', they had to go through a budget planner, to see what I was spending and what was coming into my account and found I was spending roughly the same amount that was coming in, so my account wasn't generating enough turnover for them to grant me an overdraft, as they couldn't be sure I'd have the money to pay back my overdraft. Whilst yes, it's annoying I didn't get an overdraft extension (I needed it because of Student Finance England's mess up), but it suggested that they're sensible bankers, not giving away money they can't be confident they'll get back. The Lloyds TSB friend suffered more money trouble than I and can't have been generating more turnover on his account. To me, giving out money you can't be sure you're going to get back isn't sensible banking, isn't that a part of the reason why the economy is a mess?
Again, HSBC vs TSB, when I got my account, they asked if I wanted a credit card as well as my debit card, when I asked, "do I need one?" they responded, "probably not" and left it at that. Every time my friend went into Lloyds TSB they just kept asking him until he eventually gave in, trying different methods of persuasion.
