Letter #1

On 18th May, I handed in two letters at my local branch detailing my complaint - one to Abbey's head office, and one for the attention of the branch manager, as part of the problem had occurred within the branch. As well as explaining what had happened, I expressed my disappointment and anger over events that I felt could have been handled so much better. I explained the impact on our banking - for example, once my card was cancelled, I no longer had access to online banking, could no longer make online purchases (a couple of things I get regularly, so this was very inconvenient) and we had to go into the branch to do the simplest of banking tasks. After my experiences on 11th May, I refused to use Phonebank, no longer trusting them to do what was asked.

I received a standard reply to this letter on May 30th (that was sent second class post)

"Thank you for contacting us and I am sorry that you have been so unhappy that you felt you must complain.

One of my team will be responsible for investigating your complaint and I have enclosed our Complaints leaflet, which explains our procedure for doing this. High quality customer service is of great importance to us at Abbey and we will do everything we can to resolve your complaint in a timely and satisfactory manner.

I know it is important to you that we resolve your complaint quickly, but we want to do a thorough investigation and sometimes this can take time. If we have not contacted you before then, we will write to you in four weeks to let you know what is happening.

Although I do not know what the outcome will be, I do hope that we will be able to find a solution that you are happy with.

Yours sincerely,

(printed signature)

Richard Harris
Head of Complaints"