I have this ongoing dispute / problem with Abbey Business that just keeps on going - six months now and they have still to even understand the complaint, and it is not like it is a tricky one.
My problems all started when i asked for a very modest overdraft of £200 around July/August 2007, it took them about a month to reply and they turned me down. I figured this had to be a mistake (only £200, I have good credit) so I queried it but some weeks later they confirmed that my application had been declined.
“So what” you may say, after all Abbey don’t have to give me an overdraft. Well a bank account with no overdraft facility is both expensive and next-to-useless to me so I asked them to close the account, just refund my money (which they have taken from me while i waited for them to respond to my attempts to communicate with them) and shut the account - simple.
Unfortunately not so simple, they are next to impossible to communicate with and, while I was patiently waiting for them to respond to my letters or return my phone calls, I was going overdrawn, and getting charged, and then getting charged for getting charged; a few pounds of charges turned into a few hundred pounds of charges, and still no response from them.
- they never respond to emails
- when you telephone them you are:
- left waiting for half an hour before you speak to anyone
- often the line goes dead before you get to speak to anyone and you have to call back
- if you do get to speak to somone they don’t know how to help and put you on hold until the line goes dead and you have to call back
- they claim there is nothing wrong with their phone system / internet banking
- the promise to call you back and then don’t
- they tell you things which subsequently turn out to be false
- they tell you things which are blatantly untrue
- they fail to receive half your letters
- when they do receive your letters they don’t do anything
- they promise to write to you and then don’t
And so I am left waiting, patiently or not-so-patiently waiting, because that is what they have asked me to do, and nothing is happening beyond my account is going further into the red.
It is incredibly frustrating, I’ll wait weeks and nothing will happen. And so I spend half-a-day telephoning them and will get told something like “we wrote to you yesterday, you will receive it tomorrow”. I wait a few days and no letter arrives, so I’ll spend another half-day-telephoning them only to get told that they have no idea what I am talking about!
So I write to them, send it recorded delivery, I don’t receive any response for months beyond “we are dealing with your complaint please be patient”, so I’ll phone them again and, if I am lucky and don’t get cut off, I get told something ridiculous like:
- “apparently we resolved that complaint two months ago, sir…”
- “we [Abbey staff] are under strict instructions not to refund any charges at the moment, until the High Court have made their decision…” (true or untrue, it is irrelevant)
- “we received you complaint from our Bangor branch and…” (what?! where?!)
- “I can’t put you thought to a manager because they will only tell you the same as I am telling you…” (eh?)
Meanwhile, despite my not touching it, my account is hemorrhaging cash because of their charges, hundreds of pounds. I have asked them repeatedly to freeze the account but apparently they can’t do that, however they will let me close it, all I have to do is pay off the outstanding charges!
Examples from my diary:
Tuesday 4th December 2007
I called them to find out how things were progressing. The man I spoke to told me that a letter had been sent out since the 20th and that he would put a copy in the post to me, first class, today.
Friday 7th December 2007
still no copy of the letter so I call them, only get through to the automated system and then cut off some four times. So instead I call Abbey (not Abbey Business) and ask for them to have a go at getting through, they have exactly the same experience several times before getting through to someone who says there is no problem with the phone system!
Now through to Abbey Business I ask how my complaint is proceeding and he tells me that it was resolved on 8th October 2007 and no letters have been sent since then.
I explain to him I have letters from Abbey Business in my hand relating to my complaint, dated 29th October, 6th November and 20th November [letters saying that they are dealing with the complaint, sorry for the delay, please be patient]. He could only reiterate that the problem was resolved on 8th October, that there were no other complaints attached to the account and promise to send me a copy of the 8th October letter [which never arrived].
2008 Update:
Six months since my original complaint I receive an incorrectly addressed letter saying that they can only find one charge on my account (£30) and have have refunded it accordingly; thanks, sorry for the inconvenience, issue resolved, complaint closed.
I am dumbfounded; there is little but charges on the account going back for six months, hundreds of pounds of them. I wrote back stating this and I got a reply, hoary! No, it says they say they have received my complaint and will contact me back in four weeks time…… great, back to square one again (I now have eight almost identical copies of this letter).
Maybe it is me?
Sometimes I wonder if it is me, if I am maybe delusional or something (maybe I did not call them? maybe I made it all up?) - thankfully it seems I am not alone:
Interestingly this man banks, like me, with both Abbey Business and the CoOp
Also a very quick Google search turns up this:
And possibly best of all; Margaret Dibben (The Observer - Friday November 16 2007) says:
“Just what is going on at Abbey? Why are so many people complaining about its service? In the past six months, I have received nearly twice as many letters about Abbey as any other banking group…..”
