Scottish Elises

At last progress for a small village.

Our local S/S has changed over from BP to Esso and the price immediately fell from 137p to 130p.

tut

Get a Santander 123 credit card and save another 3% on your petrol, that would make it around 126ppl

Ding ... fuel is so expensive that a cash-back credit card focussed on fuel makes a lot of sense.

Unleaded at Sainsbury around the corner is 128.9 at present. So you're only paying 1.1p more than me ... of course you spend £10 getting to/from the nearest petrol station

Cheers,
Robin

robin wrote: ... of course you spend £10 getting to/from the nearest petrol station

Should have bought a dieseeel

Fortunately my S/S is only a mile away at Mintlaw, though before Verian used to fill up when she went to the Supermarket to spend my hard earned money.

I get double points on my AA CC, but now that they have halved the benefit of the points against their products I am looking at transferring all my Halifax bank accounts over to Santander. With the 3% on the current account upto £20K, 2% on fuel, and 1% on utilities etc, their calculator says that is worth around £800 per year cash back.

tut

And twice ding ... the Santander 123 account is free money

Cheers,
Robin

Good luck with that...

Santander customer service is beyond woeful.

Myself, the inlaws and 2 workmates have all closed our accounts with them in the past 2 years because of numerous problems and unusual happenings on our accounts.

For example, my inlaws had £70,000 withdrawn from their savings account one day, only found out a few weeks later when paying some savings in and asked for a balance...
Santander treat them like they were criminals trying to con the bank...after several weeks and the threat of court action, the inlaws eventually got their money back, no apology, no compensation for loss of interest, nothing.
Turned out a cashier at a branch in Edinburgh had typed in the wrong account number when withdrawing from someone elses account.... A simple error, however the way the inlaws were treat as if it was their fault was really really poor.
My account had no interest added on the due date until I noticed and then had to chase them for it - contacted the banking ombudsmen to get some action (very helpful by the way) and eventually got my interest...then left them, not at all a good bank, never ever again....

Its a shame that so many big companies seem to have lost all thought for the general public that are their bread and butter.....only last night spent 1hr on the phone trying to get orange to stop charging my wife for data use on her phone, even though its within her inclusive allowance! What is the world coming to? Cue One foot in the grave music.....

Am with Kuga on this - Santander to avoided at all costs !

Just bought something with a 5.7 Hemi.......
Should have gone to specsavers !

H8OAG wrote:Just bought something with a 5.7 Hemi.......
Should have gone to specsavers !

I could bore you with all the woes I've had with every bank I've ever banked with ... stretching from incompetence, lies and all the way to what I suspect was a huge fraud that got swept under the carpet.

The point is that the Santander, whilst perhaps not giving you the customer service you would want, do have a good deal on both their current accounts and their credit cards. The savings/current account comes out top of the list on money savings expert, which may or may mean it's any good.

Cheers,
Robin

I try to have as little to do with my bank as possible (Bank of Scotland). Not because they have messed much up (other than taking a small epoch to open my business account), but simply because it's less hassle that way

And it's free, in fact they pay me a fiver a month for the privilege of my business. Business account will be free until middle of next year too, IIRC.

Enjoying 1% cashback on everything through our (non-HBOS) Barclaycard mastercard, and some Avios (formerly BA Miles) when I can find somewhere to take my British Airways Amex

I found a recent Which? satisfaction rating and the Santander is near the bottom - 4th last out of 21. However, BOS is next below it and RBS next above it. You don't have far to go to reach the other high street banks. As I suspected, they're all rubbish

http://www.which.co.uk/money/bank-accou ... isfaction/

It seems that if you want good customer service you need to go off the beaten track.

Cheers,
Robin

I agree with that chart, I've been banking with First Direct for years now - they're superb, never had any problems at all. The customer service is spot on.