Beware of Yorkshire Bank

[Guest]

Which means it's highly unlikely some data as simple as a date of birth became "corrupted" during migration.

Not at all Jonesy, the bank itself admits that is the likeliest cause.

During part of my time as a Software Development Manager we used IBM's DL/1 database architecture. It was well known that a trap existed for the unwary programmer in that the wrong data segment could be retrieved if the code was badly written - something which we, naturally, tested for thoroughly.

It seems highly likely that a similar event occurred to cause the error. That is not a simple clerical error or a mistake of the sort which all of us make. Such events are the result of inadequate software testing which should not happen.

[mfwebb]

I regularly read horror stories about Santander but, so far, my experience of them is good although I have not had any occasion to do anything with them except the "normal" day-to-day banking on-line. I am a customer of theirs because I was with Alliance & Leicester since 2001 after falling out with NatWest after being a loyal customer of theirs for 21 years.

I wanted NatWest to send me a cheque for 1,000 US $ so I could send it off to America with a form. They deducted the £ equivalent on the day I made the request after my confirmation by fax (which they asked me for). Charged me £16 for doing it -- but it took 2 weeks and 2 days for me to receive the cheque after making 4 increasingly frustrating telephone calls. At the last call they offered to refund the £16 charge which I accepted. I then made a formal complaint in writing telling them if I couldn't trust them to issue a cheque I couldn't trust them to do anything. I got the usual "clerical/computer error" jargon and an explanation that cheques in foreign currencies were dealt with by the branch in Leeds not at my local branch (no-one told me that on the phone). They refunded the £16 charge again by way of compensation but I moved banks shortly afterwards.

The only reason I chose Alliance and Leicester was because a leaflet dropped in my letterbox at the time offering me £50 to transfer my account to them.

Before NatWest I was a customer of Yorkshire Bank but left them after some dissatisfaction in 1980 -- I can't remember what that was about. No doubt Santander will upset me when I ask for something at some time in the future and I shall go elsewhere but so far they are behaving themselves with me.

As far as bank scams are concerned, Santander is about the only bank from whom I have not received a scam e-mail -- or a scam e-mail purporting to come from them.

I have had them purporting to come from Lloyds and Barclays (I have never had accounts with either of them) and also from NatWest and HSBC (who I have had a business account with in the past). I forwarded all of them to the relevant "phishing" email at the respective banks.

All the best,
Malcolm Webb
Lincoln UK

[Colin Rowledge]

Banks in general, are a pain in the you know what but then the same applies to any service supplier, whether it be Insurers, Power and Utility suppliers, Cable co.'s etc. - in fact, any service organization that has the misfortune to deal with me.

Being profoundly deaf, I cannot use the telephone, so when problems occur, I am obliged to visit those places in person. If the location is not in Oakville or reasonably close I resort to email.

The results - if that is appropriate term -are:
In person visits - I am told to call to make an a appointment or sit and wait for the 1st available person. Generally, I choose the latter and the person I am confronted with either doesn't have a good enough command of the English language or indicates that the cannot assist me as the problem is outside of their control. They then offer to have such a person contact me. I tell said person that I am deaf, so can they please use my email address. After assurances to that effect, usually within a couple of days, my wife will intercept phone calls from said contact person. The last one wouldn't meet me in person, so he insisted that I use the phone. How this ended up was as follows, mywife assisted me by telling me what questions he had and then giving me the phone to answer that question. This went on for 20 minutes and the final question was -- Will you give me an authorisation to discuss how we will resolve this with your wife?

I won't even start on email responses since they are almost non-existent.

Good luck if you have some incapacity that affects your ability to communicate