Customer Service - Abbey National

On 14 April I wrote about the pleasant experience that I had in the Local Abbey branch after completing the forms to change the current account from NatWest where I had banked for 50 years. I take it all back.

The transfer has been a disaster. We arranged to close the NatWest account down on 10 May. They closed it on 09 May so my wife had a card declined for the first time in her life. Abbey then granted us an overdraft which we did not want and did not request. We don't do overdrafts!

Two weeks after we completed the forms my wife discovered that her employer had not been informed of the change of accounts for salary payment purposes so I asked the local branch why this had been and was informed that everything was fine but the employer would be sent a reminder.

On 16 May I went to withdraw cash and discovered that we still only had the overdraft facility and the money that was in the NatWest account had disappeared into the ether. Well it wasn't with the NatWest and it wasn't in my new account so where was it? We have now been forced to use the overdraft to survive! I am going to wait and see if they will be cheeky enough to try and charge us for this.

I entered the branch to enquire where my money had gone. There was nobody on reception and only one young girl behind the counter. Eventually I got a message to my customer advisor who was dealing with another customer. After waiting 45 minutes to see her I had to leave because my parking ticket had run out.

This morning we received a letter from the department in Bradford who are dealing with the transfer (dated 13 May) stating that they are now dealing with the standing orders and informing our various employers and pension providers that we have a new account. This is a month after we filled in the forms! My local branch have no idea where our money from the NatWest is!! Today I was asked to obtain a closing balance from the NatWest which 'should help' to sort the problem out. This is a matter of a few thousand pounds that has gone missing and nobody knows where it is.

Abbey National, don't go near them folks because frankly they are completely incompetent! No wonder our banking industry is in such a mess if this is an example of their efficiency.