Santander: Absurd security rules!

I have yet to encounter anyone who believes that Santander have any semblance of competence at all.

Mark

Banco Franco have been busily closing their call centres and shipping all the work out to Gdansk.

The Polish droids speak very good English but that's it. Their competance is way lower than "bus queue" standard and some legacy systems could not be moved.

DerekG

My (90 year old Mum) had quite a few Santander accounts (from the usual places like former Bradford & Bingley). Since I have had to take on some of the admin of her accounts, I've found out how awful Santander are with so-called security. I've agreed with my Mum that we will move all her Santander accounts elsewhere (their rates aren't so stunning that we're going to be disadvantaged compared to other savings bodies): I don't suppose Santander will notice/care that they've lost an account holder, but at least it'll save my blood pressure.

You did well to get any information out of them at all. Their "security" system seems to have the sole purpose of enabling them to refuse to answer any questions from any customers on any subject at any time. It seems to achieve this admirably.

Or pretty much any other financial institution IME. I've moved my business around quite a few times and find that none of them are any better.

Indeed. Let's face it, life's too short for most people to be constantly moving their money around. Suffering a little bad customer service from time to time seems to be a price worth paying for an easy life.

Hence capitalism's much desired perfect market is never achieved.

Reece

My wife and I went into a Santander branch. We each wanted to transfer £1000 from one Santander account to another. We were asked to produce ID. We brought out passports and a Council Tax bill. That was not enough, they wanted a third form of ID. They suggested a non Santander debit or credit card. Why should a Santander customer have cards from other banks I asked. I actually had a credit card from another provider and completed my transaction but my wife did not. She offered her Bus Pass but that was not suitable as ID. We were told that they needed a third form of ID as they said that passports can be easily forged. I pointed out our Chinese and US visas on our passports and inquired in vain why it was easier to get into The Peoples Republic or the security conscious USA than transfer our own money from one account to another. Thick printouts of their rules were produced from under the counter. The queue behind us was getting restless as this ensued. Eventually the manager was called and allowed my wife's transaction. We now make a point of using a smaller branch where we are known to all the staff and passports are sufficient. Dean

Why do you need any ID to transfer money from your own account to your own account? Or am I missing the punchline?

Why would you expect their rules to make sense? ;-)

Terry Pinnell wrote

No, Santander are the biggest load of fcucking useless wankers in the business.

Every UK institution they have taken over they have basically trashed. Alliance & Leicester, Abbey, Cater Allen (arrogant pricks who are now run by a load of Pakis who kicked me out after several years of no trouble from me, without giving a reason, while at the same time upgrading my account several times), B & Bingley...

I wouldn't put any money in there because if Spain sinks, Santander will go down and given the sheer size of the problem I would not expect the UK govt to support its UK operation any more than to the legally required extent.

The FT yesterday said the UK operation was ring-fenced, but I'm not giving them anything of mine.

I seem to recall reading a while back that while that was the theory, the bank could still internally trade one security for another. So internally they could swap UK securities from the UK operation for, say, Spanish securities from the Spanish part. Obvious where that could end up.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Mike Scott wrote

It depends on how cunning somebody is.

Nothing actually stops somebody doing some book cooking, and no legal safeguards will prevent it.

For example I have a load of UT investments. Some of these have ended up done via Cofunds. I am not so keen on that because somebody inside Cofunds who has access to your account (which will be loads of people there) could clean out your *entire* account and do a runner. I wrote to them asking what safeguards they had on that; their (outrageous) reply was that I was protected by the Govt depositors' protection scheme!!

Now I just buy UTs via a discount broker and have them directly with each manager. It's more paperwork but nobody can do a hit on the whole lot.

The MD of Santander UK was interviewed on the radio the other day and he said that all Santander Spain can do is draw a dividend from Santander UK and this div has to be approved by the FSA. I am sure that is true.... ;)