Meeting with the Manager

My husband and I met with the bank manager at 4pm yesterday.

I don't know what I was expecting, bank managers are usually scary people - but he was okay. He started by apologising, but appreciated that apologies were wearing thin. To cut a long story short, he told me that the complaints department held authority over him, so if they were dealing with it then there was little else that could be done. He had already had a look at the account, and phoned some people to see what the situation was, but could tell me nothing further.

I gave him letter #2, and he asked what my primary concerns were. I said firstly, the £200 that was taken from the account and the fact that it's almost seven weeks since I submitted the forms. He told me that "some fraud claims are taking up to eight weeks" - which would have been fine, except I'd been told "seven to ten days". I pointed out that a lot of this could have been avoided if the bank had been honest.

Secondly, I mentioned the charges, and how obtuse phonebank had been despite knowing it was part of a complaint. I said something like "I can't believe that nobody in this company has the power to stop or refund those charges". I explained again why I felt that we should not have had to pay the charges, and he looked at our account on the computer. In the end, he agreed to refund the charges from May (£95) and to either stop or refund the charges that are due out this weekend (£80), so that's something. He is also going to ring the Complaints Department to try and expedite my complaint.

So, where do I go from here? Well, if I follow Abbey's complaints procedure, I need to give them a further four weeks before I contact the Ombudsman. I think that's too long. I have been messed about so much by this company, I have lost any faith I had in them. We shall be opening an account elsewhere. Given that the manager is going to try and speed it up, I have decided to give them two weeks, which I think is more than enough.

In the meantime, if anything happens, I shall let you know.