Thursday 27 January 2011

You say Santander and I say Salander

Had another exciting (! SO not.) exchange with my current financial services provider, the extraordinary circus sideshow that is Banco Abbey De Santander Nacional or whatever (regularly voted number 1 for appalling customer service! No argument from this customer, oh no). Who blocked my card because of "an unusual transaction". Then claimed they hadn't blocked it, but said they'd unblock it. The "unusual transaction" was a direct debit of £3.29 that goes out once a week, regular as clockwork. The man in the Complaints department agreed that it was a strange course of action to take - but hey, that's the wacky world o' banking! So yet again I'm vowing to move to First Direct (please don't ruin my day by telling me they're just as bad, I'M NOT LISTENING LA LA LA). When I have a day off. And I will follow this by channelling Lisbeth Salander for enough time to hack their website to say "We're Crap! And Proud Of It! And There's NOTHING You Can Do! Ha Ha Ha!!!" Well, I can dream anyway.
Apart from that brief blip, a good week so far - so good, in fact, that I have a sore shoulder from trudging home, my bag straining at the seams with proof copies of things I ACTUALLY WANT TO READ. I'm amazed I have time to update at all. In fact I haven't.
And finally: an invoice we received the other day. Nice to know the lovely Bookpoint are branching out and providing other items than books and stationery.


8 comments:

libby said...

Glad you are blogging again...but am amazed at the speed with which you read!
As for banks....eeehhhh all as bad as each other.

Lucy Fishwife said...

I read ridiculously fast. If I REALLY like a book I go back and read it again in case I missed anything. Just finished that Dennis Lehane in 6 hours but it was plot rather than style I was reading it for (he's good though). John Crowley, for example, takes longer. Yup banks all bad, but so far I haven't heard as many complaints about FD as the rest - and Santander really did come top of the list for crapness!

Christina @ Fashion's Most Wanted said...

That's funny! Don't even start me off on Santander! Hope you're good xx

Lucy Fishwife said...

I've strangely enjoyed this week. Karma? Or early onset Alzheimers? I'm still with Santander, so I suspect the latter... xx

Vanessa said...

To my mind, the only good thing about the rebranding of Alliance & Leicester as Santander is losing the orange.

First Direct are good, also Smile. I am with all four!! (Am a bit of a flitterbanker as you can tell.)

Lucy Fishwife said...

Vanessa - the decision may be made for me as Santander have just informed me that they are sending me a new card ("within the next 10 working days"), and the card I have is now dead. So I have no access to my own current account for anything up to a fortnight. If I hear one more call centre wonk saying "I can only apologise for the inconvenience" I will scream.

Sgt Pepper said...

Idling away another lunch hour in the Ministry of Fun and reflecting on what your weekly standing order of £3.29 (to Lush, I deduce) is for. I so hope it's something surprising.

pilgrimchick said...

I remember an exchange I had with Barclay's Bank when they blocked a transaction because the check I wrote out to pay with looked "suspicious" somehow. I actually went to the bank every day for a full week to try and cut through their endless red tape.