Halifax denies 81 year old woman access to her account for three months

Typical of Halifax and all the rest!!!

Try Alliance and Leicester - they are EVEN worse - and their complaints dept cannot handle a complaint unless you pass security. If they have failed to note your 97 year old mothers date of birth correctly you are stuck. Then you write in but get no reply - you telephone and are handed from pillar to post until you get back where you started this costing you money because they have 0845 & 0844 numbers. Frustrating & shambolic...and we are supposed to Trust them with our money ?! - Has any reader experience of NatWest - we are thinking of changing to them ?

Unfortunatly this is only one of many tousands of examples of appalling neglect and incompetence on the part of the banks, we now hear that HSBC are considering moving out of the country, presumably to avoid the pathetic level of non regulation they fear. If I were HSBC or any of the rest of them I would recall how the British motor industry failed to notice that its competitors were manufacturing far superior products and took so long failing to do anything to improve their products that they disappeared completely. Next will be the whinging apathetic banks.

Been with Natwest for 48 years. A few hiccups but nothing to justify leaving them but will your branch be closing as RBS I believe have been required to close a lot of branches to meet competition rules?

Don't disregard the previous comment - it really is typical of Halifax. Years of being in a dominant position as the nation's top mortgage provider have allowed an arrogant, anti-customer culture to develop and senior managers have done nothing to prevent this state of affairs.

It seems quite likely they have even encouraged this type of culture which is based on the theory that customers will not go elsewhere because other providers offer a similarly poor level of service. This may be true but senior people worry more about the number of customers they lose than the number who complain.

This is quite clearly substantiated by the fact that most financial services companies are prepared to pay the £500 they are charged by the Ombudsman for each complaint made against them rather than compensate a customer by paying out £100 or less to discourage the customer from referring their case to the Ombudsman.

Try registering a Court of Protection appointment of Deputy to manage someone's affairs! Whether bank, building society or utility company, only two organisations could cope: the DWP and T-Mobile.

I have been with First Direct since they started and could not have asked for better or more convenient service both on the phone and the web. Apart from the fact that it took over 6 weeks to open the account. That was years ago - I have no idea if it has improved. Although they are a subsidiary of HSBC, they seem to take customer service far more seriously. No, I am not employed by them - I am an RAF man. They rightly fined me twice for late payment of bills, but have accepted my lame excuses and repaid the fines both times.

This is a terrible story. I feel we do not make enough noise, which allows the Halifax and others to get away with it. At a mimimum, go after them in the small claims court and ask for £5k compensation. £150 is derisory.

For the record I find natwest pretty good. Natwest branches will not close, only RBS.

@busy bee. My experience of NatWest is VERY poor.

Mark

I am afraid that all your comments are symptomatic of a country in decline. No one in the UK seems to care any more, or do their job properly.

Sorry, I mean they dont know how to do their job properly anymore.

Off topic a bit, but does anyone know how banks can take a week to wire transfer money abroad and if one pays an increased fee ( from £25 to £40) it then takes almost a week. I could fly there, drop the money off in an jiffy bag, fly back and recover from the jet lag and still have time in hand. Aaaah!

We tried to convert my wife's current account at Natwest into a joint account. After visiting the branch and filling in all the forms... nothing! After several phone calls and three more visits to the branch each time speaking to a real person who assured me that "something would be done" ... nothing. Not a single solitary response to anything. We now bank at Halifax. Not he most efficient place but so far not so bad as to precipitate a move.

Ian McCann: Don't use a bank for such transfers! I use Currencies Direct (regulated by the FSA if that means much these days) for transferring both one off payments and regular transfers. All very easy to do (paperwork done by e-mail) and the exchange rates are better than anything quoted by the banks!! Try www.currenciesdirect.com or telephone 0207 847 9435

£150! They must be joking. This would hardly cover the postage and phone calls let alone the inconvenience and frustration. From the tone of Halifax's response they appear to think they are being generous. AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF FLOWERS. Wow+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Typical, and the £150 is a sop and your time and your mother's inconvenience worth a lot more, reject it and recover the additional telephone costs etc, about £750 is about right, and oh, it is worth the few extra assertive (not belligerent) letters.

Did this with capita, and got more than 3 times the first offer, adding more each letter I had to write.

First time I've posted on this, I've been with First Direct for many years and frankly they and Hargreaves Lansdown are the only Financial Companies I would whole heartedly recommend. The service at first direct really is excellent (and as with previous post, I dont work for either company)

I think £150 compensation is disgusting given the poor level of service

I also have problems with halifax .I pop into the local branch each saturday to make a deposit this is never a problem

However if i try to withdraw my money

I need to show my passport then answer lots of questions i asked the counter staff why they make me feel so guilty for asking for some of my money

to be paid to me

also they never open on time and never apolgise for being late they are a very poor organisation

£150 and a bunch of flowers AND an apology such generosity NOT.

The compensation for the incompetence, the arrogance and the distress caused should be much much more and the Financial Services Authority should police such stupidity.

This is an professional bullying and the victim should be properly compensated. Shame on you, Halifax!

It is so regrettable that so many national institutions have become slaves to their little daily routines. In some cases reported in the press, these routines have been out of date for very many years and they do not even know about it.

When they are caught unaware their so-called media guru go through act of making a virtue of their incompetence-making fool of themselves!

This is a downward trend and bodes ill for all concerned.

Most people are too busy to complain, but perhaps it should be seen as something that needs to be done!

this is an example of what has happened when machine systems have taken over from bank officers -

There should be some kind of regulation over the types of services that are automated - and which are not to be so machine driven.

Santander is trying to get customers to use a phone placed on the wall when they enter the bank - a phone to some central switch board - so that they can cut down on bank officers - and the customers have no idea to whom they are speaking and why certain rules suddenly appear.

There is a reason that they have such a bad reputation, while individual bank staff may lovely the arbitrary rules the bank has - and that the customer does not know - make it a difficult bank to have a account with when a simple non-routine request is made -

The bank simply wants to out source it -

that rules that caught that poor family are IT rules - if there had been a person account manager it would never have happened.

I have despised the Halifax since they missold me an endowment mortage with appalling lies about my repayment amounts in the 1990s. I fought them for eight years, finally winning compensation via the Ombusman but I had lost my house by then (I downsized to a smaller cheaper house). No amount of advertising showing their staff singing and smiling will change my view of them. Do not deal with them and do not trust them. I would trust the Mafia first.

To 'busy Bee' the person who asked about experiences with Nat West I can tell you of my recent experience in the West Midlands which to me sums up quite a difference in banking attitudes. From my own experience I can only label Nat West as the lazy bank.

From a shelved inheritence I had a bag of 100 old (large sized) 50p coins valued at £50. I called in at a local Nat West Branch (Merry Hill branch) and asked if I could convert them to current currency. The assistant asked if I had an account with them to which I said 'yes' ( for around 22years) . She replied that she would have to speak to her superior and dissappeared. She returned and told me 'no, they could not exchange the coins' .

On my way home I called into a local HSBC bank and asked the same question. No questions from them just a very good service. Within 2 minutes they were counted and exchanged.

I now have a HSBC 'First Direct' account as my main banking account and Nat West is my backdrop account with little in it. And it will stay that way. Full marks to HSBC.

Here it is again in case you didn't see it first time round:

‘The present department handling the matter is closing and records are being transferred elsewhere and we have no means of contacting the relevant new department within the organisation’.

Words fail me ...

.. I could only express my feelings with a handful of birch stems.

Being a kind of bolshy person I look for good service anywhere I go, but 2 banks have failed the ultimate test as far as I'm concerned, Abbey (now Santander) and Clydesdale. Both banks refused to take a complaint from me one saying they didn't take complaints, at the head office of Clydesdale, and the other saying they didn't have a complaints department. I realise bank are not the flavour of the month, but everyone seems to have a complaint about them.

Natwest wrongly paid Standing Orders - took weeks to recover my money. I changed to RBS which has been reasonable. Halifax fouled up two of the Grandchildren's acounts - but paid nominal compensation - so stayed with them after changing branches. Santander have given average service, but the best financial companies have been Nationwide and Hargreaves Lansdown in my opnion.

Presumable there are some comparison tables somewhere that give the outcome of 'customer satisfaction surveys'?

I've been with Yorkshire Bank for many years and these days they are pretty good if you use their personal banker system. They went through a torrid time a few years ago when they introduced call centres and I nearly ditched them.

Ian McCann , You could also try the Post Office for currency transfers. I sent cash to Florida & the money appeared in the account there before it was shown having left my UK bank ! Rates pretty good & no transfer fees.

FIRSTLY - Everyone should know , the moment you contact the OMBUDSMAN the BRANCH has to pay £850- thats £850- off the managers bottom line. It helps with their thinking process

I know of a lady in her 80s who was mis sold a LONG TERM investment by an IFA. It was a Halifax scheme but they refused to do anything about it.

As someone else says their long term dominance has bred arogance.

£150 quid and some some flowers, wow halifax you really know how to say sorry,, you should be made to pay her £150 for every dar she was locked out of her account,

jerry

I've been a FirstDirect customer for 16 years and had excellent service from them in that period - however things seem to have dramatically changed recently as 2 months ago I asked for a *temporary* increase in my overdraft to cover some expected and resolvable cashflow concerns I had for a few weeks, it was "computer says no" and they also withdrew an inactive credit card account I had with them. This led to a whole lot of stress whilst I had to find an alternative way to cover my financial defecit, a knock on effect of transactions getting returned and incurring extra charges and a "black mark" on my credit history. My cashflow problems are now resolved as I had anticipated they would be, but I've been left a whole lot worse of as a result and am absolutely disgusted with FirstDirect and can't wait to move all my family accounts away from them. There is absolutely no reward for loyalty these days.

The very good point here "the computer says no" while Martha Lane Fox may be lovely - and no doubt people should learn how to use computers -

the use of computers to judge private transactions at a bank is unacceptable -

The computer has no loyalty - that is the point.

There should be some legislation to keep this from happening - - - - that is assessments of credit requests at banks should be done individually - - taking into account the history of the individual - and their immediate need.

If we don't watch out this computerisation of personal transactions will create a society of alienated people - and indirectly freeze many business transactions as well - bad business - bad for the country

I agree with Jerry. Hit them where it hurts. When I had a problem with Nat West a few years ago it cost them £1000- which they were happy to pay , as it was cheaper than TWO complaints ( £850 x 2 = £1700) to the Ombudsman + potential fine. £150 is an INSULT. COMPLAIN to the ombudsman. ALSO - is it FRAUD / theft by retention to do this? criminal action perhaps?

It's a paradox. One of the most efficient banks I ever encountered was Bradford and Bingley, before it went bump. Superb on line services, efficient staff and, when things did go wrong, very competent customer relations. Shame they got taken over by the worst bank I have ever encountered for service and complaint handling - Abbey/ Santander.

Alan Cork and Bryan Jefferson sum up the Halifax perfectly.

Halifax were our mortgagee's from our first house purchase. We thought, back in 1988, that they were a model of what a building society should be - staid, solid dependable.The reality was that they were changing into and aggressive American style lender which, even then, were determined to make earning commission the big thing in the branches.They "churned" two of our endowments costing us some £26,000 which sum we recovered after a seven year battle that ended in the county court. They bullied their panel surveyors into ignoring vital restrictions set down by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in1988 on the applicability of the House Buyers Report and Valuation to older houses.They simply instructed them, in a private communication to their panel, to ignore the RICS restriction confining the usage of the HBRV to houses built after 1900 and smaller houses.

For us this meant that the surveyor reported on a house built in c1700 with two large extensions and clay for a mortar. He missed a great deal and Halifax were quick to say - Not our problem: the HBRV is a contract between you, the client, and the surveyor.Take it up with him, but fix the defects in the house (our security) otherwise we will enter and do so, and add the costs to your mortgage. My question to the Halifax was: "Why then, as a third party, interfere in that relationship, by instructing them to ignore the RICS restrictions etc etc.

Later Halifax solved the problem of disagreements with the RICS by setting up their own scheme. Thus shortly before their ignominious collapse they offered a survey that looked like a House Buyers Report ( Scheme 2, in Halifax jargon) but was in fact different from the RICS survey (and worse in my opinion) in several respects. They also liked to use Colleys a wholly owned subsidiary of Halifax, which in my view, raised all kinds of conflicts of interest.

The best bank manager I ever encountered works at RBS Parbold. Ms Farrington is a credit to the banking profession and I cannot fault her. A good bank manager can make all the difference.