Ok, normally I'm a fairly laid back person and I merrily wait in line at check-outs or listen patiently to the canned music whilst on hold to Call Centres.
Not this morning though..... I bank with Santander in UK. I won't even begin to tell you about the fun and games I had with them when we moved here nearly 6 years ago. Ok, then I will, make yourself a cup of tea and sit back...
I had 2 accounts with Santander and decided to close one of them a few days before we left England. At the airport on the day we left, I thought I'd treat myself to some duty free perfume. Strangely, my debit card wouldn't work. I tried and tried and was getting more frustrated as my husband told me we were about to board the plane. I had to leave the perfume behind and as I lurked at the back of the boarding gate line, I quickly rang Santander's Call Centre - in Asia...
What I could glean from the 'Agent' was that the dumb cashier in my branch had closed the wrong account. Of course, I had destroyed the card for the account that had no money in and should have been closed. The card I had to the mistakenly closed account had everything we owned in it, equity from the house, salaries, you name it, it was in there, locked away, never to be spent.
Fortunately my husband was able to buy us some goodies on board with his card from his bank so we didn't starve. Plan B would have been to ask my young daughter for a loan from her Noddy purse.
I forget how many ridiculously expensive phone calls I made from my husband's English mobile phone to Santander's Call Centre - in Asia - once we landed in Canada.
After a few weeks and some mind-boggling security questions from their Fraud Office, I was allowed access to our money again. Oh yes and they graciously put £25 in to my account for the inconvenience.
Today I tried to notify said Bank of our new address on-line. Not possible if it's from a foreign country to another foreign country. Not even possible via their secure e-mails only accessible via their secure log-in to the secure on-line banking. Not possible either to print off their stupid 'Change of Details' form that when I clicked it, took me straight to a page that stated 'Error - Page Not Found'!
Eventually I rang their Call Centre - in Scotland and spoke to a girl who was less easy to understand than the Asian Call Centre agent. However, after 6.5 minutes, she agreed to e-mail me the form.
Now all I have to do is print the form off, complete the form by hand, address an envelope, stick on a $2.50 stamp, drive a 9 mile round trip to the Canada Post mail box, wait at least a week for it to get there (some hope) and then have it processed.
Easy isn't it? As I'll explain to my daughter later, that's how we used to do it before computers were invented.....
No comments:
Post a Comment