Bloody Santander!

I know they are crap - I still took the business account there cos it was free and usually when it is finally set up they are ok if all you do is pay in and write cheques.

In Oct they proved that even simple banking is beyond them by paying a cheque qhilst also returning it. Ie... My account was debited £50 for the cheque - they then returned it to the payee Refer to Drawer (I now have the cheque and the letter back from the payee. Naturally I paid the payee cash and paid her £25 bank charges (got to keep the customer happy)

I contacted them a week later to point out they still hadnt recredited my account - they told me the cheque hadnt been returned!

Paying the cheque took my account £3.15 overdrawn.

I have since been charged £30 referral fee for paying the cheque, £15 overdraft fee in November, and £30 and £15 again with the same description in December, and two lots of overdraft interest of £0.03.

The account has only ever been overdrawn on the one ocassion - otherwise it is usually in credit by a feww hundred to a few thousand pounds.

Even the (lovely and helpful) customer support exec is now beyond embarrassed by his companies inability to solve this problem in 2 months. The ONLY good thing that I can say is that this chap has taken on the ownership of the problem, he asked me to email in a scan of the cheque and letter, plus details of all the costs I incurred. He rings me regularly to apologise and tell me he is still escalating and chasing it, I hear his frustration when I talk to him on the phone. I will be writing at the end of this saga to praise him.

The rest of the bank is a shambles though - how can they possibly find this so hard to sort out!!

Another letter will be written in the New Year (no point writing now as it will only get lost during the hols.