About two years ago I was about to move house, so I opened an Abbey National e-saver account to hold the deposit as it had the highest rate at the time. All went well until I came to notify the change of address. The online system itself doesn't allow it (unlike e.g. egg) and the help gives no clue as to how to do it.
I tried writing to the address on the interest rate letters they sent me. No response, and the next letter still went to the old address. I tried again, same result.
Then I tried phoning. I was told that you can't change address on the phone, and I should write. I pointed out that that hadn't worked. After some debate they said they would send me a letter to which I could reply to confirm the new address. What they actually sent was a generic Abbey address change form with no indication of where to return it.
When I got the next letter, still forwarded from the old address, I decided to give up and empty and close it. The help doesn't give any information about that either, so I phoned again. The first time I got transferred to what seemed to be an open phone with no-one there, but on which I could hear other conversations - possibly a security hole there ... the second time I got a real person, and apparently they have no problem closing an account from a phoned instruction. The only confirmation they asked for was the address, for which I of course gave the old one.
So ... imagine my surprise when last week I got a cheque for the residual interest (9p) - sent to the *new* address! As Victor Meldrew would say, I don't believe it. I can only assume that they have two completely separate copies of the address in their database, used for different purposes. If their system design is that bad I can only feel retrospectively glad that it didn't lose my house deposit when I needed it ...