Ulster Bank Systems Down, Many Left Without Money

Still no closing bank statement for my fixed account that matured on the 2nd. When I was in my branch I was told that my monthly bank statement had been posted on the 2nd of the month. As of today I still have not received this.

I'm still getting conflicting information from UB in relation to account closures. Every time I ring the general helpdesk, I am being told they are working through the backlog of closures. They have been saying this for three weeks now.
But every time I talk to someone in authourity or a branch staff member, they have contacted the closures team and have been told they have not started processing any closures. In the latest contact I had from them they said they only started processing closures on Tuesday. (Though I have no confidence in that.)

This response is unfortunately typical of the way UB have handled this whole IT issue. It appears as if no one knew what was going on and if they did they certainly weren't telling front line staff. The standard response to every single question I have asked in relation to closures, missing payments, withdrawals, direct debits, standing orders and anything alse, has been we are very sorry and are working through the backlog.

This is why I have already moved my current account, all my savings and my credit card away from them and no amount of apologies or compensation will ever get me to return. The only power I have is to vote with my feet and that is exactly what I have chosen to do. I just wish they would finally give me my outstanding interest, so that I can be completely shut of them.

Was trying to do a Euro-transfer into another Euro-zone country via the internet anytime banking facility over the last couple of days.
Although all the forms work, it has kept failing on me at the end.
After giving their hotline a call, they told me that they are aware of this problem for a very small number of customers, and that they have no idea when this will be fixed.
Funnily enough, they say they don't inform anyone upfront as it is only impacting a small number of people...

I called in to my branch enquiring about my missing bank statements to be told that they had just been posted. I waited 8 days to receive the promised statement. Nothing arrived. I tried to ring my branch to follow up but as per usual I cannot get through to my branch (ever) and my phone call defaulted to their customer service desk in Northern Ireland. I was told that the July statements are being posted next week followed by the June statements the week after (these have to be checked).
They were surprised that I had not been told this in my branch as everyone is apparently supposed to know this.

When I was in the branch I was able to walk straight to their customer service desk and immediately after to one of their tellers. There were no phones ringing and they were definitely not busy. Yet when I try and ring my branch my calls are going straight to their customer service desk in Northern Ireland. I get the feeling that the branches are deliberately not answering their phones.

SlurrySlump

I have been promised a number of letters by UB in relation to various things over the last 6 weeks. They keep telling me that they will send me a letter today, so I wait about 3-4 days and no letter turns up, so I complain that no letter arrived and they say they will re-send it. 3-4 days later, still no sign of a letter so I give up, then about a week later two letters arrive on the same day, the original and the replacement. This has happened with three different issues. So now I have a bunch of duplicate letters.

Also, when I get angry on the phone, they ask me would I like to make a formal complaint and I say yes, so they send out a letter acknowledging the complaint. However, I have raised four complaints with them in the last month and none of the letters state which complaint they are acknowledging and were all posted on the same day (plus duplicates for missing letters). So I have about eight standard letters acknowleging un-named complaints.


It seems to be taking about three weeks from when they promise to send a letter, until it is actually sent. I assume their systems are snowed under with a backlog of post. But of course they fail to tell their frontline staff this, if they did they would be able to tell people to expect delays with letters and not further annoy people by having them chase up letters.

In relaton to the branch phones, I have experienced the same issue you have. I ring the branch, after a few rings it diverts to the helpdesk, you tell them you want to speak to the branch, they put you on hold to contact the branch, they can't get through to the branch, they take a message and say they will E-Mail the branch and get them to ring you, you then receive no call back. After this happened to me several times over two days, I got in my car and drove to the branch and of course when I got there, the branch had no customers waiting and three tellers sitting around chatting.

I have since figured how to get through to my local branch. It would appear that the phone rings at the branch twice and then diverts to the helpdesk, so the branch staff just ignore the two rings. So, I sit at my desk in work, ring the branch, let it ring, then when it diverts I hang up and hit redial. I keep on doing this and after about 10-20 tries finally someone in the branch gets annoyed enough to answer the phone. I'm sure my boss will be delighted to hear I am running up his phone bill.

I have become infuriated by UB's poor treatment of it's customers. This is the fault of their public relations team and the management of information in relation to this problem. I don't have a problem with the performance of the staff at the helpdesk or the branch level, they appear to have been left out to dry by their own management and I would imagine are as frustrated as the rest of us. The staff appear to have been treated as badly as the customers.

As I stated in my previous post, no amount of apologies or compensation will ever get me to return.

Ulster Bank have just "refunded fees" to me on my current account. The problem is I never incurred the fees in the first place !! It is a small sum of money. What a mess.

On a separate note, on 13 August 2012, as per advertisements in June 2012, Ulster Bank are due to reduce the interest rate on their regular saver product. However, you still cannot close an account with Ulster Bank. I cannot see how Ulster can be allowed reduce interest rates if there is no method to close your account. Surely, Ulster Bank are going to have to postpone the interest rate reduction.

can anyone tell me if it is possible to close an ulster bank account in a different branch of the bank other than my own? i am away at the moment and there is a branch of the bank in the town which is near to where i am staying. thanks.

Send them a letter.

A further update to my comments regarding bank statements. The story has now changed for the third time. The new story is that during the months of August and September the bank statements of June and July will be posted out. They couldn't give me anything more specific than that.
Today, 15 days after a fixed term deposit closed with them I got a letter stating that the balance was still in the fixed term account. Yet 15 days ago when I called to my branch I was given a screen dump of my current account showing that the money is sitting in my current account.
I have no idea now which account has the money. I am tempted to write a cheque for the balance and see what happens to it.

I got an update from the account closures department in UB a few minutes ago. They have confirmed that they are still under instruction not to close any accounts, as they are still not confident that balances are correct. They told me that when various people have told me that they are working through a backlog of closures, that this information was not correct. They can give me no estimate as to when they will be allowed to start closing accounts.

I had a fixed account maturing in early August. I cannot get a closing statement for this. I contacted them and they said that they would post me out a certificate of interest. On the same day two certificates of interest were posted out and both arrived on different days. Both certificates had different amounts on them. On the first my DIRT tax had been calculated at 27% and on the second my DIRT tax had been calculated at 30%. No one could explain why, other than blame "The Event".

I phoned them to clarify. I spent one hour on the phone, going from their Moneydesk to Complaints Northern Ireland to Customer service Northern Ireland to Complaints Southern Ireland.

Still not resolved. Things are very far from right with these people. My suggestion to everyone is to double check everything and do a manual calculation. I have checked the interest calculation on my fixed account manually and I have come up with a different figure.

Incidentally, when phoning Ulster Bank I made sure to take note of all the people's names that I had spoken to. I was often asked the name of the person to whom I had previously been speaking. Unfortunately I was constantly being told that we have nobody by that name in this department. So when talking or complaining to the Ulster Bank, get the second name of the person that you are speaking with but also get the exact title of the name of the department that they are working in so that you can refer back if needs be.
They have so many departments/sub departments for different regions that you get pushed around.
I was cut off after waiting for 15 minutes when speaking with some in the department that deals with complaints for Northern Ireland while he tried to transfer me to the department that deals with Southern Ireland. Personally I think that he wasn't even trying to do that, he just cut me off.

Anybody get a call about compensation yet?
I just did.

UB are still in talks with the regulator and consumer assiciations etc in regards to a universal offer, but they are trying to narrow down the field or list of disgruntled customers by offering cash compensation offers.
I wont say how much i was offered, and i was very very lightly affected by the whole fiasco tbh, but im happy to accept it.
Just hope im not shooting myself in the foot for a future universal offer, but in fairness, i dont want to be greedy either.

bump for admin purposes