Scabby Abbey and the account closure farce!
Let me regale you with a tale of shenannigans so silly I was lost for words!

It all starts back in 2005 and in the concrete wonderland of Milton Keynes.... my ex had been banking with Abbey for many years but had eventually seen the light and got a proper bank account. As such the Abbey one had a little over £1 in it and was still registered at her parents address. Periodically a statement would turn up announcing the pitiful balance etc.

So when we decided to move to Devon and were dealing with loose ends, mail forwarding etc it seemed common sense to close the account.

Into the branch in the city centre we went and explained to the desk gibbon the intention to close the account. "You can't" he said. "we don't have any money". This seemed like an odd thing for a bank to say, but sure enough looking around we realised the cashiers had been replaced with numerous ATM machines for paying in and withdrawls and any manned desk was just that, a desk... with colourful leaflets of all the debts we could be "sold".

So this was a problem. The account contained an uneven amount, what's more at less than £10 the ATM machine was no use anyway. So the desk gibbon advises that to close the account he could issue a cashiers cheque for the total balance of £1.52 and the account would be closed. Easy, we'll do that then and after 30 mins (???? how long!?) we leave with a cheque and the assurance it's all sorted.

You can imagine the confusion when 6 months later a bundle of post arrives from the ex's parents which tell a very different story... It seems that having taken away actual cashiers and cash from the branch Abbey now make a charge of £3 to give you your money in cheque form. So having issued a cheque for the full balance of the account they then instead of closing the account put it £3 overdrawn to cover the cost of the cheque!

Now for the icing on the cake. Having closed the account we'd not given them a forwarding address, what's more the overdraft was not authorised either. So 6 months of charges, letters etc had increased the debt to over £100!!!

My ex doesn't like dealing with stuff like this on the phone so asked me to try and sort it, but of course for data protection they wouldn't deal with me so back and forth we go until eventually someone see's the light and agree's to cancel the original £3 charge (for issuing a cheque to close the account) "as a gesture of goodwill"!? then continuing to cancel the charges arising from their original mistake. So having received a statement will a zero balance at last we again had to request the account be closed in writing.... yep you guessed it, they took so long to sort it that they then applied another months interest to the debt and again the account went overdrawn by a few quid!

Finally the wall began to show a dent from my continued banging my head against it and I wrote a very "final" letter....

I advised them the circumstances up to that point and announced we would not be sending any payment to correct their mistake and that if the matter was not resolved within 5 working days I would take great pleasure in passing the story on not only to the financial ombudsman but also every newspaper I thought might have an interest as well as the newsletter publication for their shareholders to see where their money was being wasted.

Funnily enough the account just dissappeared after that...

but honestly, what idiot came up with the idea of a bank with no money or cashiers?
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 17 Jul 2009, 17:29, 4 replies)

Doesn't surprise me given my experience of Abbey.
To be honest they were OK when I first signed up with them, but they definitely turned to shit about 2005 - that was about the time I had my run-in with them documented a couple of posts down.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Fri 17 Jul 2009, 17:49, closed)

Funnily enough
This Abbey cockup happened summer 2005 ;-)
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 9:26, closed)

I work in a bank (& after this QOTW I feel like a right leper btw, I think I'm going to change my name.)
And a bank with no money sounds as stupid as a record shop with no actual records. Hang on, iTunes...

From a Bank's point of view, cash is a complete hassle, but I still fail to see the point of a retail bank without it.
(minlan no longer barks at bancleys, Fri 17 Jul 2009, 18:42, closed)

ABBEY ARE UTTER CUNTS
it's the law
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 17:22, closed)