Santander receives 1,300 complaints a day in first half of 2010

27 August 2010 0:00 am | Updated: 27 August 2010 2:29 pm | By Paul Thomas

Santander has announced it received around 1,300 complaints a day in the six-month period to June 2010.

The figure, which equates to around 245,000 complaints, is 7 per cent down on the same period in 2009.

The bank says around seven out of 10 complaints were dealt with within 48 hours and only 2 per cent were outstanding for more than eight weeks. It also said four out of every 10 complaints were upheld in favour of the customer.

Santander says some customers are experiencing more issues than normal due to the bank’s expansion in recent months and, as a result, has made more support staff available in branches and call centres.

Director of service quality and complaints Steve Williams says: “Whilst we are pleased that the volume of complaints received has decreased from the same time last year, we know we need to do more.   Improving service quality remains a priority for Santander, as we don’t want any customer to be disappointed by the experience they receive from banking with us.”

There was 216,158 banking complaints in the first six months of the year. However, the banking category excludes 244,772 complaints related to bank charges. The Supreme Court decided that these bank charges could not be assessed for fairness and, therefore, complaints relating to this were closed during the first half of 2010.

Lloyds TSB announced yesterday it received around 2,000 banking related complaints a day in the first half of 2010, but rejected nine out of 10 of them.

If you enjoyed this article, sign up here to receive daily email updates from Money Marketing and Follow @_moneymarketing