[Davew]

Anyone using Abbey Nationals business account?
I find it to be very very poor - rubbish communication, can't get to my account on line, local branch a joke. How about you?

[tonylee]

abbey 
i tranfered £4500 from abbey to cahoot to pay off a loan in may 2006. they managed to lose the money for six months. i kept up the payments on the loan while they looked for it
when it was founnd they offered me £60. in comp. 
took it to the fso who got it up to a whopping £260
it took over 12 months to sort out
now i really struggle to take an abbey cheque off anyone!
abbey a bank- i think not
tony

[tonylee]

easy to say that. my god i struggled. even the financial services ombudsman were poor but i have since learnt they are funded by.................... the banks!

[ok cleaning]

 i have got abbey free forever business banking and aslong as you dont need to see or speak to someone it is perfect and have no complaint since i started using it
(3years)

[Davew]

Just tried to contact them on their seven days a week number from their website.....and they are shut on Sundays.

[tonylee]

thanks ian. i have moved banks!
i also understand ok cleaning. with free banking for life. thats a good deal
needless to say all banks throw money at you when you dont need it but dont when you do!
can you email me some prices and ideas for a webb site design please
enjoy your coffee
tony
 

[Paul Coleman]

Anyone using Abbey Nationals business account?
I find it to be very very poor - rubbish communication, can't get to my account on line, local branch a joke. How about you?

I use the Abbey bank for personal and business banking.
Yes the website performance has been much poorer over the past year.  It may bew coincidence but it seemed to get worse around the time that Santander took it over.  You may already be doing this but to access your business banking account, DO NOT go through www.abbey.com to click the relevan buttons.  Instead, go directly to www.anbusiness.com .  I find the access is much easier that way.
As far as local branches go, they do not get involved with the busainess banking side of things.  When I joined, this was made clear to me from the beginning.  In order to provide the FREE service, it must all be done online or by telephone or post.  I've no problem with that side of things as the service is free and for it to be free it is reasonable to expect them to run it the cheapest way - especially as this was made clear from the beginning.  If I need to phone them, most of the time the call in answered in fairly reasonable time and usually by someone who has English as their first language (though sometimes with a Scottish accent    )  .
I have two main gripes with them.

1. is that they don't seem to answer emails

2. is that they don't provide the payment reference number for BACS payments until the 1st of the following month.  This can be pretty inconvenient for businesses that provide a frequent repeat service such as ours.

Number 1. I can excuse to some degree as paying someone to read and answer emails is an extra cost

however

2. is inexcusable because all it needs is a one off tweak of the coding on their website.
It's not as if it can't be done either because they manage to provide all the reference numbers in real time on their personal banking website.
This issue alone could be enough for me to jump ship.  Indeed, I would happily pay a £5 a month fee for the release of this information in real time.

[Moderator David@stives]

Shiner

How do you pay your cheques in ? is it by post.

If so how do you safe guard them going missing.

I have about 50 cheques a week and would be disasterous if they went missing,

[Paul Coleman]

Shiner

How do you pay your cheques in ? is it by post.

If so how do you safe guard them going missing.

I have about 50 cheques a week and would be disasterous if they went missing,

I am fortunate enough to live within easy walking distance of my local Abbey branch.  Indeed, I am so close to the town centre that many used to park in my road to work in town - until they started a resident parking scheme.  Anyway, I put my cash and cheques directly into the ATM at the Abbey branch.  They've never lost any - yet !!  I do have an extra safeguard of scanning all my cheques before banking them.  That way, if anything does go missing, I have a hard copy print out of which ones to get replaced.  If they lost cash, that would be a lot harder to prove.  I suppose I could note the serial numbers but that wouldn't really prove anything.  I forgot to mention the ATM way of doing things in my previous post so apologies for any confusion there.
The Abbey accounts are only free for the first 100 cheques per month.  Some months I stay within that comfortably and other months I hold some back for a few days.  I anticipate having to pay Abbey business banking some bank charges next year.  If that looks likely, I may be naughty and deposit some of them into my personal account from which I can do a single BACS transfer to my business account.

[LWC]

i have an abbey credit card. the WORST credit card i own. so unhelpful its untrue

couple of months they changed over to their own credit card instead of being under mbna

total joke, you cant pay your bill online and you cant do it on the phone!

then i asked for a direct debit to be setup. was all done, then got charged for not paying on time...when they had set it up and not taken it out themselves...joke

i spent ages on the phone saying no we dont deal with that so on so forth. ring this number...ring any bells?

i wrote them a LONG email telling them how unhappy i was with their service. got refunded all my charges...too right

[Neil_A]

I got a loan with abbey


They sold me Insurance when they shouldn't have... When i needed to claim.....They said you cant.......... took them 3months to come up with what they was going to do ...

I hate them!

[Paul Coleman]

i have an abbey credit card. the WORST credit card i own. so unhelpful its untrue

couple of months they changed over to their own credit card instead of being under mbna

total joke, you cant pay your bill online and you cant do it on the phone!

then i asked for a direct debit to be setup. was all done, then got charged for not paying on time...when they had set it up and not taken it out themselves...joke

i spent ages on the phone saying no we dont deal with that so on so forth. ring this number...ring any bells?

i wrote them a LONG email telling them how unhappy i was with their service. got refunded all my charges...too right

If you have internet banking with any bank, it should be possible to set up a bill payment option and pay by bank transfer.  the 16 digit account number is the payment reference.
I think I will be paying credit cards by direct debit in future.  I got in a muddle last month and incurred a £12 charge (not from Abbey).  I have two accounts with the same company.  I ended up paying one account twice and the other not at all.  Big oops !!

[LWC]

i know you can. but like with all my other "proper" credit cards, i.e. virgin and barclaycard. you go onto your account...click pay...how much...done

simple

cant be bothered doing it through my bank account. you SHOULD be able to do it through their site. or even by the phone! complete joke. i can buy heating oil on my card over the phone and its a small company...joke

[Paul Coleman]

i know you can. but like with all my other "proper" credit cards, i.e. virgin and barclaycard. you go onto your account...click pay...how much...done

simple

cant be bothered doing it through my bank account. you SHOULD be able to do it through their site. or even by the phone! complete joke. i can buy heating oil on my card over the phone and its a small company...joke

Totally agree with you that you SHOULD be able to pay via their website.  Maybe it was excusable a few years ago as companies adapted to internet technology but these days, such a facility should be standard practice IMO.

[Village Gleam]

Davew what's your online issue. I am very smart.

[Davew]

Having trouble logging on to view my account and bacs transfers. I have set up my password, user id etc but can't get on. Can't get through easily on the phone - get put in a que due to high level of users, get fed up waiting finally get through to be told they are really busy and they will phone back. Not much good when i need to beout working and earning.
 I also tried to put some money in the Portman  the other day - what a joke that was as well.

[LWC]

i know you can. but like with all my other "proper" credit cards, i.e. virgin and barclaycard. you go onto your account...click pay...how much...done

simple

cant be bothered doing it through my bank account. you SHOULD be able to do it through their site. or even by the phone! complete joke. i can buy heating oil on my card over the phone and its a small company...joke

Totally agree with you that you SHOULD be able to pay via their website.  Maybe it was excusable a few years ago as companies adapted to internet technology but these days, such a facility should be standard practice IMO.

crikey...you can pay me for the windows on my website...and abbey cant do that?

[Village Gleam]

Dave I've only just come back on.
I see from the other post you don't like being called ignorant . Let's see how ingnorant I am?


Now Abbey, you have a user name, password, and a question/answer. Get it wrong three times and it locks you out. What you need to do is either press refresh or go back onto it. Keep refreshing untill the question/answer is one you know you can get right.

If you have another user (ie your wife has a card too) it could want the other information (her mothers maiden name). Hope this helps.

Has Mr Solubility made your problems dissolve?

[Davew]

Steady on, yes tried that both cards too and havn't got to the point of being locked out. Last time i looked i had some bean error message come up! whatever that is. p.s i'm really quite friendly.

[D.Salkeld_Ltd]

Hi All,

We bank with Abbey, Mortgage with Abbey, Credit card with Abbey, Loan with Abbey.  Never had any problems that they didn't solve fairly quickly.

However....................................

Went on hols last 2 weeks in August.  Paid in £300 in cheques (by post).
Came back to find the bank had returned my phone bill unpaid
Then a customer rang to say they had got the cheque back they had paid me 3 weeks earlier
I checked my account and sure enough the £300 wasn't credited
Rang the Abbey - Don't know anything about it - what cheques??
Then another customer saw me in town and presented me with their cheque and a letter from Cahoot :
So I rang Cahoot - turns out that Cahoot is owned by Abbey and uses the same Prescot Street address for their prossesing centre : :
Must have gone to the WRONG department - Cahoot just sent em all back the the bank addresses on each cheque.

Now I go up to Grimsby branch each week and use the ATM - no problems - in fact they have been good and sorted a little mistake I once made.

David