“Horrendous bank. I deal with all my elderly fathers affairs as he is Reg.Blind. Trying to get Santander to recognise that fact and offer any help is useless, I don't think they have any policies in place to help the aged, disabled, blind etc!
My father lives alone 60plus miles from me, so I set up an online account for him and operate it myself for him. Anytime he needs to do anything or know whats in his account I do it for him. Couple of years ago he needed to make a large payment via the solicitor for a house purchase. Brought him down to my area, took him into a Santander with every possible proof they could ask for including the solicitors letter requesting the amount. OUTRIGHT FLAT REFUSAL TO HELP. Sent us home to do it online.
Now, once again, he is selling his home which will takes months as usual but meantime wishes to buy a mobile home he's seen. I have tried to transfer £25k to my account and hoped to do three times, which I would then add another £40K of my own money to pay for this until he gets his house money through. BLOCKED! I have meantime sent everything through to prove LPA that I have , again they are putting every single obstacle in my way instead of helping and accepting. They send emails out that you aren't able to reply to, so have absolutely no chance of explaining the situation to them. FIVE DAYS NOW, AND STILL THEY HAVEN'T OK'ED IT. MEANTIME WE WILL LOSE THE HOME HE HAS SET HIS HEART ON.
FIRST CHANCE I GET I WILL MOVE HIS ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER BANK.
If I have sent the letter of LPA through, along with my passport etc it should be dealt with immediately!”
“Omg if you value your peace of mind your confidence in a bank and your money then please stay away from Santander. Staff have no training they have no idea how to "investigate" even the smallest question not to mention the "higher" staff ! I wish I knew what they did but all enquiries have failed. The details of their banks addresses and phone numbers are outdated and no effort has been made to update them. No consideration for their customer care no respect no thought to your welfare and they're "one of them" who are always right that is the mindset of Santander unfortunately. They take no responsibility for issues that go wrong it's your fault never ever theirs and that is the crux of the many problems customers experience. I truly believe they will have to close their offices here in UK customers are beginning to wise up to them thank god. Stay away....”
“Staff rarely want help business customers and any questions I’ve been told to phone them or go online. They won’t deal face to face with any business query or take any cash they send you to the nearest post office if their hole in the walls aren’t working which is most of the time. Not sure how they’re in business there business app is appalling and you are extremely limited to what you can do on the app overall dreadful”
“Tried to transfer couple of the thousands to my other account. They blocked my transaction and nobody called me for few hours, so I had to call them myself. After clearing the security, I was told that the payment will be released within 24 hours because it had to be approved by transaction team. For 5 days, the account remained blocked because of bank holidays. Finally they unblocked me. So I attempted to make a payment again, they blocked me again and asked me 100 questions again. I explained that the payment had to be done urgently, and they said that it will be prioritized. Another day past and the account was still blocked. I called complaints team and raised my concern, and they finally unblocked me. I wasted over 6 hours and one week to make 1 transfer. This is insane. I told them that I do not trust them any more, so I am moving my bank. Only Santander has got ridiculous system where you have to deal with 3 different teams in order to approve the transaction. First one is general customer service, then security team and finally transaction team. All other normal banks have only one team who you need to speak to in order to clear any payment. All payments are approved within 2 hours window, not over 24 hours! If you need to make a larger payment avoid Santander by all means. They became me worst bank!!!”
“Made a withdrawal request, and it wasn't Approved; what I was searching for here wasn't given; I complained to Resuc.org, and the door was open to me. All my investment was fully recovered. referral A1”
“Want to upgrade my isa.
Told I could do it in branch. Get to branch, told I can’t do it and said there is nobody on site who is regulated. They tell me I can go to the isa team by phoning up. I phone up and the lady eventually tries to put me through to the isa team. Over 40 minutes later they still don’t answer the phone to me. I try again today, same 40 mins later I have had enough and decide to hang up.
Three days of trying i am now fed up with it all. I will have to transfer to a different bank to get better than 0.8%.
Do not put your savings into this company. Customers and customer service mean absolutely nothing to them.
Date of experience: 06 April 2023”
“My wife and I have obtained Power Of Attorney respectively. I telephoned Santander, which was a trial in itself, believe me. To get to speak to a person I had to enter my card number incorrectly, twice, and I finally spoke to a human being. After going through a ridiculous security check, just to make an appointment, I was told that the next available appointment was 6th June. Imagine I just won the lottery and wanted to discuss opening a savings account, do you think I would have to wait till the 6th June? I am already disgusted with the treatment I received from the CEO's office when a member of staff lied to me, so I am not a happy customer. The was the final straw, said I didn't want the appointment and will go to the Metro Bank just round the corner.
Santander, instead of giving Money to Ant and Dec for ridiculous adverts, improve your one-to-one with customers.”
“They froze my wife and mine bank account with no explanation, we are both disabled and we could not top up our gas and electric because all our money is in the santander accounts, they don't care we have not got electricity, so no heating either, going to report them to the financial ombudsman, all my direct debits won't get paid so we will be charged extra money for missed payments. I will get the financial ombudsman to sort this out. Stay away from this bank, or get your money out before there so called fraud detection team just freeze your money when ever they fill like it , it's all a con from this bank.”
“Warning, get your money out of this bank.
They have just frozen mine and my wife's account leaving 2 60 year old disabled people with no money at this time, when there is a cost of living crisis, no explanation, they just don't care.”
“Trying to switch banks is proving impossible. Apparently I have given first direct different details, which I haven't because I rang Santander and asked. So now I've been asked to prove who I am !”
“Worst bank I have ever dealt with. Was reluctantly persuaded to invest in their stocks and shares ISAs and I don't know who does their investing but the money would have been better in a zero interest current account. Keep clear and avoid their investment products!!! Was told they'd won awards for the best stocks and shares ISAs and if so I would hate to the wthe worst ones.”
“Called to delete an address from my account. Spoken to four different people and been cut off twice. Amateur. Disgusting. And they spend millions advertising how wonderful they are! Will be closing account.”
“I sent £2000 by mistake from metro nearly 2 weeks ago . I went to the bank , I called many times and no one is helping. Tgey said the process take a month?? Why ? We all use internet!! Every minutes delay the chance of my £2000 to come back is slim . I called to complain and no one even interested to look at my issues. Very poor customer service and I will definitely leave”
“Worst bank ever, do not use their services. Went to a branch to deposit a cheque, they told me to go and do it on the app. Went to the app it does not read my check. Chatted to support they told me to contact customer service. Called customer service they told me I had to go to the branch. AVOID!”
“Unbelievably poor and rude customer service! I have banked with them for over 8 years, went into the Southampton branch today only to be spoken down to, shouted on and pushed by a supposed supervisor at the Above Bar branch. I went in with identification and a simple request to change information on my account but a rude woman interrupted my conversation with a staff member, refusing my request, arguing with me about it, raising her voice then barging past me when I refused to speak to her about it any further. She then proceeded to go to the back and audibly complain about me to a colleague while I was standing there. Extremely unprofessional behaviour and unnecessary aggression, I would never expect this behaviour from any staff there. I am closing my account and would strongly recommend anyone not to bank with them. They do not value their customers and worse still, would not pick the phone several times when I tried to submit a complaint.”
“I joined this bank late last year because my own bank Coop (22 years with them) had let me down badly. To date I've had 3 problems with Santander they "forgot" to cancel a cheque I had issued and took no blame for it. The second one was I had rang to check a payment and I was kind of told if they had received a cheque for me it would be in my account ! wrong they had cancelled the cheque and forgot to tell me. My account was compromised in February they allowed £200+/- to leave my account without any verification from me. Then they had the nerve to write to me saying more or less it was my fault ! still in shock why is this bank still in business !! There is no customer care there is no concern for their customers I'm now searching for a bank with a good reliable customer care ! any help out there ?”
“I would give them minus 5 stars
Someone got into my account and emptied it, they cancelled all my direct debits and closed my account. At the time i’d had a stroke, in hospital, half blind and paralysed, they weren’t interested. They spend a lot of money saying ‘problems? We are here to help’
TOTAL JOKE!!! Six months on and I’m still having problems, they have cost me a LOT of money, I am still extremely ill and they have the cheek to pay me £100 compensation into the account THEY CLOSED!!! Customer for 40 years! Absolutely DISGUSTING!! HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM BECAUSE WHEN THINGS GO WRONG THEY DON’T give a sH1T AND WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE HELL!!”
“Purchased a item online after doing all relevant checks but turned out to be a scam with payments made through their payment system. Santander refused to class it as a scam before the goods did not arrive then once the goods did not arrive their investigation concluded that I should have known it was a scam before the purchase and held me liable for the payment. They did not pursue the scammers and the investigators made their conclusions based on my age (I'm 74) rather than asking what checks I had made. Despite my husbands recent death which blocked our account (easiest way to complain) they refused to provide a complaints email and didn't send through phone transcripts that were promised when I had no option but to complain by phone. Wholly deserve their 1 star for terrible and dishonest customer service”
