they have always had a limt on the number of cq that you can pay in
Really? Never did when I banked there?
Santander may be cheap, free in many cases, but they are hopeless. Fine if all is going well, as soon as there is a problem, it's neigh on impossible to get someone who will take any responsibility for anything.
Arseholes.
Santander are absolutely useless with business bank accounts. After 12 months I finally got my business account straight with them. Totally hopeless when it comes to business bank accounts. I opened up a personal account with them and still pay cheques in and refuse to have a business account with them ever again and they accept I will NEVER have a business set up with them as I've told them THEY ARE USELESS WITH BUSINESS ACCOUNTS every time they ask me to open one so they just carry on paying them into my personal account which I pay my tax to the Inland revenue every month. Go with any bank except Santander when it comes to business accounts. Personal accounts are fine as they are done locally. Business accounts are done elsewhere, (not local). Santander couldn't hold a pee up in a brewery when it comes to business accounts and I remind them every time they even suggest opening a business account !!!
I agree that they are not clued up with business accounts. However, there are two reasons I stick with them - for now.
1) I have totally free business banking with them (up to specified limits) because I have one of those old accounts that were advertised as "free business banking forever". If they ever try to change that (like they tried on a previous occasion), I will be straight to the ombudsman and the advertising standards authority.
2) It's easy to deposit cheques out of hours via ATM as I'm only a five minute walk from the branch.
For my BACS stuff, I use a free, FSB Co-op small business account.
Unfortunately, a few years ago, Santander removed, without warning, all customer references from incoming BACS payments - meaning that I sometimes didn't know who had paid. So I switched all the BACS to Co-op. It took Santander about two years to re-instate the references by which time they had lost that part of my business. So now, they get all my expensive to handle transactions and Co-op get the easy stuff. Depositing cheques with Co-op is trickier so I take the most convenient bit from each account and use it.