After being with Santander for years I am now in the process of moving my business bank account away from them. Ironically I have never even opened an account with Santander but at one point I had three accounts with them because they took over banks where I had accounts.
My business bank account used to be with Abbey National, then unfortunately became Santander.
A few weeks ago I purchased a few items over the internet ( no more than I would do normally ), the house phone rang and it was an automated message from Santander saying my account was suspended due to suspect activity! At this point I was quite literally f*cking fuming (how the f*ck are you supposed to run a business when these jokers keep suspending your card) Then shortly after my mobile rang with another automated message from their fraud team. The computerised message then reads out amounts from the last few days (how the f*ck are you supposed to remember exactly how much you spent in transactions? )
The automated message goes on-
£23.96 on the 1st January
£235.11 on the 12th January
£112.23 on the 13th January
£432.56 on the 19th January
Oh, yes all those figures mean a great deal to me
So you now get an option to press a key to listen to them again, this time it tells you where the money was spent- pure f*cking genius! If it had said where the money was spent in the first place I would have remembered the transactions immediately!
Today was the straw that broke the Camel’s back.
I ordered something from a company that I don’t regularly deal with and to be fair it was for something about £5k, so I sent the money electronically like I always do. This means I have to log in to my Santander account- so I need to know the Business log on ID, then I need to know the passcode and registration number (so the account is pretty secure). Then when you send money electronically they send you a text message passcode to your mobile phone, which you have to input into the computer for the transaction to work. I typed in the passcode and hit return. The money did not go immediately which I thought was strange
A few hours later I logged back on and the money still had not been sent, so I searched around the website and gave them a call.
It turns out that this transaction had been stopped by the fraud team, who didn’t even ring my mobile to ask any questions about the transactions
Then the guy at Santander could not get the money moved, he could only email the fraud department and ask them to move it
A few hours later the same guy phones me back and says that the transaction will not go through because they do not allow electronic payments to this other firms bank account
He suggested I pay via debit card- which uses the same money from the same f*cking bank account
I can’t believe that a bank can choose who you can and can’t pay money to- it’s none of their f*cking business who I send money to and what is even more annoying is that I could complete the transaction using their debit card!
Needless to say I am now in the process of moving to another Bank. It looks like it will be the Cooperative bank.
These banks are really taking the p!ss out of people, many of them pay 0.28% interest up to £250,000 but charge 28% if you want to borrow money from them
but take it from me. This is the start of the slide. When banks start restricting peoples access to money this can only mean they don't have the resources to back it up. We read of people being asked what they want their own money for before the banks will allow them to withdraw it too 
