Snail Mail Letter to Abbey (at their annoying request)

Tuesday February 24th 10:53am

Below is the letter sent to Abbey today..................

Abbey Business Banking Centre
Customer Relationship Team
301 St Vincent Street
Glasgow
G2 5NT

24/02/2009

Re: Exceptionally bad customer service and business banking support

Account Name: Geyser Ltd
Account Number: 41009476

Dear Abbey

Complaint about the Complaints Procedure
First let me complain that I have to write this letter at all. We are now in 2009 and telephones were invented in 1876, a full 133 years ago. Most businesses have mastered the art of using a telephone by now and use it as a standard means of communication – except Abbey.

Email – much newer than telephone’s I admit, but still invented in 1972 and also widely accepted as a means of communication – except Abbey.

SO! When does Abbey insist that any complaints are written in snail mail and posted by the antiquated postal system? It seems to be to be a barrier to complaining more than anything else.

The Main Complaint
On December 17th we faxed a CHAPS payment to Abbey requesting a payment of £4,983.72 to made to Lazzarini Radiatori in Italy in £GBP (not Euro’s). The payment left our account but then was put back into our account at a value of £4,693.41. Also you added a £25 charge for carrying out this nonsense transaction. At this point the questions we had were 1. Why has the money come back into our account 2. Why is the ‘returned’ value less than the ‘original’ value 3. Why did you charge us £25 for failing to carry out our request?

Ok, so we now have a problem but the only thing we need to do is telephone Abbey to get the answers…….wrong…….Abbey customer service just put you into the ‘telephone call centre maze’.

The precise details (time, transcript) of the first few telephone calls were not logged by myself or my colleague who both tried to fix this problem. However, out Abbey customer service experience consisted of the following lies…………..

Abbey operative - ‘I will just put you through to the correct department’
Translated into ‘I will just cut you off’ or ‘I will just put you on hold forever’ or ‘I will just get rid of you to someone else who will not help you’. Sometimes the ‘other person’ would either ‘cut us off’ or ‘put us on hold forever’ or send us on the merry-go-round again with the jolly line of ‘I will just put you through to the correct department’ and so it would go on…..and on…and on…. (whilst we paid time and the cost of a national rate telephone call).

Enough was enough. This pathetic customer service from Abbey was disgraceful. The next person I spoke to you got both barrels from me. Result – the operator could not help me but…. a Mr James Gallagher would be informed of our plight and would telephone me back with a full explanation and resolution! Hurray! I was so excited I could hardly sleep that night.

Two full weeks passed and no telephone call or any other communication was received from James Gallagher or anyone else. Now we were livid, out of pocket, with a key supplier who had not been paid and believing that Lehman Brothers would have been a better business bank than Abbey.

My next telephone call to Abbey was for one very simple request – put me through to the department that deals with complaints. I thought it was Amy Whinehouse on the other end of the telephone because all I heard back was ‘NO! NO! NO!’ You have write a letter (on a scroll is acceptable) and post it to head office.

What I want from Abbey now
An answer
A full refund of our money
A refund of the £25 CHAPS charge
An explanation of why the money never got to our supplier
What you are going to do to get the money to our supplier in the future
A refund of our costs of endless telephone calls to Abbey
A refund for out time wasted dealing with you
A refund for my time writing this letter
A refund for the stamp to send this 19th century communication

Free Marketing for Abbey
Of course you love to tell everyone that Santander has 65 million customers. With a Marketing background myself, I am also very keen to share my Santander experience with all of those customers (and your fellow banking companies also). So, I have created an online blog for the world to see at http://abbeybusinessbanking.blogspot.com/ . I am considering creating a Google adwords campaign to promote it, but I am sure Google will find it anyway.

Also the following will be sent a copy of this letter…..
Santander Head Office
Financial Services Authority
Financial Ombudsman
BBC Online Business Editor
HSBC Head Office
Lloyds Banking Group Head Office
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Head Office
Barclays Banking Group Office

Do you think you can get Lewis Hamilton to print this email across the bonnet of his Formula One car for next season? I will leave that one with you.

I look forward to hearing from you (before I spend £25 taking you to court I hope).

Yours Sincerely



Chad Millington
Managing Director
Geyser Ltd
Unit 2 Leigh Business Park
Commonwealth Close
Leigh
Lancashire
WN7 3BD
chad@geyser.co.uk
01942 677792
077333 23103