A & L have always given dreadful service and I fell out with them some years ago. Abbey are just as bad if not worse and as the owners of Abbey are about to buy A & L, I fear things will only get worse.

Well, I am sorry to have to tell you that since Nationwide took over Portman their customer service in their branches has made Abbey & A & L look like well run organisations. The tellers would rather do anything than serve customers and in my local branch they are on full view doing their paperwork and completetly ignore the customers who are queuing around the shop. I now operate all my accounts on line and find Coventry Building Society, Ing and Icesave very easy to run with very few problems. With the exception of Ing the interest rates are far superior than any thing you will find in the high street. Another good one is a telephone account with Anglo Irish who use 0845 numbers and if you phone them after six at night the calls are not that expensive. (From BT land lines)

Hope that helps.

Naughty, naughty!

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/Alliance-And-Leicester-Telephone-Sales...

Thanks for the tip

I too have had a struggle with A&L to verify our new Visa Debit cards.

I even had a (previous) written personal reply from a customer adviser in the Leicester office quoting her direct line but that number redirected to a message telling me to call the 0844 number !

I tried their contact number for new customers 0500 95 95 95.  I wasn't expecting a lot of help there but the first girl I spoke to gave me what she said was a direct numnber to the complaints dept in Leicester 0116 275 4531 - only it turned out to be a fax machine that answered.  The second girl gave me 0116 200 4444 - but that also redirected to a message telling me to call the 0844 number !  On my third call to t0 0500 95 95 95 I got a chap who offered to put me through to the card activation service and that might well have worked - apart from the tiny snag that their verification process involved me being able to tell them a mobile number that I stopped using ten years ago was.  The woman from the verification service confirmed that she wasn't actually A&L but finally put me through to an A&L helpline where the operator was able to verify my identity without needing to know the out of date mobile number.

Having successfully validated my cards I was asked if she could help with anything else so I asked to register a complaint about being forced to use rip-off telephone numbers.  She took the details but wouldn't put me through to a complaints adviser.  When I tried the alternative tactic of asking for the accounts closure team she offered to close the account for me.

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