Brian Moves to London

[Brian]

What's a good mobile phone company?

I have Orange and I've spent an hour trying to top up my phone minutes. The first Indian man hung up on me, the second Indian man said he had entered my details and would top up my phone, and then an hour later my phone had not been topped up, so I called a third time, got an Indian woman, and now I'm on hold waiting for her to sort out what is going on. Now she's transferring me back to one of the earlier guys so he can explain what happened, no wait, he's "left for the day" so I'm getting a supervisor. I'm being billed for the call. The hold music is Katy Perry. In other words, I need to switch phone companies.

[Benji]

I went through 4 banks before I found one i'm happy with. Started off with Nationwide, who refused me a cash card and I wasn't going to go the bank every time I wanted my money...closed that. Then Alliance and Leicester - cancelled my direct debits for no reason - went to the branch to sort it in person... and they put me on the phone to their call centre. Closed that. Then Barclays, who gave me a £3000 overdraft, which I pay all but £200 off, changed address and wrote to them to let them know, which they ignored and had the cheek to put a default on me when they couldn't reach me at my old address. Closed that. 4th time luck with First Direct, for the last 7 years they've been great. They answer the phone within ten seconds every time, and there's always someone happy and helpful on the other side. And their call centres are in Leeds (where I used to live) and Scotland (where I live now!) so there's no dialect barrier.

Oh and I work for Lloyds group. I'm not allowed to give advice at work, but i'm not at work now... don't waste your time with them 

[karlhenning]

I am so glad the bank sold us . . . .

[Benji]

Oh and by the way, never give out as much info as I just did. It's a dangerous place the interweb.

Do as I say not as I do, kids! 

[Brian]

Banks
Have you tried Santander?  I was given the runaround by the British "high street" banks when I tried to open a checking account a few years ago for a new business that I'd started.  Very frustrating.  Then I discovered Santander had a simple business account that could be opened on-line, with basic checking and debit/credit card services, but a limit on numbers of transactions per month and absolutely no loan facilities, which wouldn't suit a lot of businesses but has proved to be just fine for mine.  I know that Santander regularly come bottom of surveys of customer satisfaction, but in my experience these don't generally measure things that actually matter (to me, anyway) and certainly this was the only bank that was any damn use when my credit cards were ripped off in the changing-room at the gym.  Lloyds were worse than useless, and only made a difficult situation even harder.

Thank you so much, Soapy!
I walked into a Santander this morning, there was no line to be seen, and within a half-hour I had opened a bank account with no hassles, no need to fax things to headquarters, no problems of any kind. I'm not getting the crap reputation either. Maybe I'll find out later  but for now, they're saviors. My applications to Lloyds and RBS are still hovering in the ether, so it's very good that the problem got solved.

Thanks to Benji, too, first direct was my next course of action. And if I ever get in trouble with The Man, I won't tell everyone on the interwebs. 

[DavidW]

Wow Brian I think you need to send Soapy a very nice classical music cd because he just gave you the best advise you've had all month!!

I bet you're wishing you knew about that bank a few weeks ago.