Santander UK Reviews 

Santander do you read your reviews?
Logged on to my business account last night to check transactions paid in as we need ref numbers, shows payments in but no transaction details just the amount, how do I reconcile these, I called the fraud helpline as your online support is closed, for heavens sake 24 hour banking, clearly not, I called the fraud number just incase there was something going on with my account, I spoke to a guy who blatantly lied through out the conversation about the details on the account, all very worrying considering this was your fraud department, I refused to give anymore details as I didn’t feel comfortable, I was told to phone help desk in the morning at 8am, I asked are they open as it was a Sunday, I was told yes……they are not!
Check online banking again, I now have payments in my account for tomorrow ….. you can see into the future can you Santander ?
This account is terrible, I have made payments to customers, which shows on my account as paid, only to find out via the customer no payment received, phoned Santander to be told sorry it’s a cliche and no the payment wasn’t sent, this is bad, I pay for this account and service and it’s not fit for purpose, get your act together, for get the flashy man on a bike pictures, read your reviews and just get it sorted …….quickly we can’t all be wrong!

Do not bank with santander charging £9.99 a month for a bussiness account charge £3.75 for with drawing cash
Charge for banking cheques
They was a good bank with no charges when i opened the account. They promissed never to charge
Now thay are ripping bussinesses off
Cant get to contact customer services
I am looking for another bank for my personal and bussines banking

If I could give 0 stars I would. Trying to managed my deceased dad’s affairs make exponentially more stressful because of Santander. Abysmal customer service, passed around depts, promises not kept, poorly trained staff, hours on hold. The list goes on and on. Avoid at all costs

WORST BUSINESS BANK EVER. BEEN WITH THEM FOR 8 YEARS NO ISSUES UNTIL THE NEW SYSTEM THAT ASKS FOR DOCUMENTS & Q/A FORM AND YOU HAVE 3 WEEKS TO FILL OUT OTHERWISE THEY BLOCK YOUR ACCOUNT + FREEZE ALL DIRECT DEBITS. EVEN WHEN I SENT THEM ALL DOCUMENTS ON TIME I REPORTED THE Q/A FORM DIDN’T ARRIVE BY POST AND THEY TOLD ME TO WAIT AS THEY CANNOT SEND ME THIS FORM AS A PDF FILE OR VIA EMAIL WHICH I COULD OF DONE INSTANTLY. THEY VERY OLD FASHIONED STUPID. FROZE ALL MY DIRECT DEBIT BILL PAYMENTS COMING OUT WHICH COST ME FINES BUT ONE DIRECT DEBIT THEY DIDN’T FREEZE WAS THEIR OWN ACCOUNT FEES WHICH WAS STRANGE AS THEY TOLD ME ALL DIRECT DEBITS WONT LEAVE YOUR ACCOUNT UNTIL THE
Q/A FORM IS REVIEWED. EVEN ON THE DAY THEY FROZE MY ACCOUNT WITHOUT ME KNOWING I DEPOSITED CASH AS A POSTOFFICE TO PAY FOR MY DIRECT DEBITS THAT COME OUT EVERY DAY, THEY WERE QUICK TO TAKE MY MONEY AND ADD IT TO MY ACCOUNT EVEN WHEN MY ACCOUNT IS FROZEN AND NOW WONT GIVE ME ACCESS TO MY MONEY. THEY ARE HEARTLESS INCONSIDERABLE COMPANY WITH TERRIBLE COMMUNICATIONS AND BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE

UPON MAKING A COMPLAINT AND REQUESTING A MANAGER OR SUPERVISOR THEY TOLD ME IT WILL TAKE 3-5 WORKING DAYS TO GET A MANGER TO EVEN LOOK AT YOUR CASE NEVER MIND CALL YOU BACK AND THIS HAPPENED YESTERDAY (FRIDAY) SO NOW I HAVE TO WAIT UPTO 7 DAYS AS THEY DON’T OPERATE ON THE WEEKEND.

THEY ARE CARELESS AND DONT CARE WHAT SITUATION THEY PUT YOU IN. EVEN WHEN MY ACCOUNT IS FROZEN AND CAN MAKE ANY TRANSFERS OR DIRECT DEBITS THEY STILL TAKE YOUR MONEY IN IF SOMEONE SENDS YOU MONEY AND DONT GIVE YOU ACCESS TO THAT MONEY. In process of leaving this terrible bank!

Poor communication, freezing account causing massive business disruption. Received a KYC email on 26/1/2026 asking for me to provide information by 28/8/2025! (I don't have a time machine!) I Ignore it, assuming it was a phishing attempt. Low and behold my business account was frozen a week later at my busiest time. Called customer service and they tell me it can take 24 hours to be up and running again. Not good enough, so will be moving away.

Horrible experiences repeated bullying

They reneged on a lifelong free business banking deal without even giving me notice. Out of the blue I start getting charged £10+vat per month - no explanation. I had to search online to find out!

And what for anyway? The basic service is solid enough but you can't search transactions by customer name - only transaction amount. So if you want to see all payments from a particular customer...tough - you cant!

Further, you can't search transactions beyond the past 6 months. Even when you download a spreadsheet, it wont show more than a certain number of transactions so when trying to get a spreadsheet for the past year, I have to download 2 separate ones and combine them. Not that they tell you this of course. I specify a spreadsheet for the past year and it sends you one - just 5 months of transactions are missing.

And another thing. They changed the layout of payments on the web interface about 6 months ago. However, the old interface is still there in the menu - just doesn't work. Why not create a confusing interface guys???

No I do not recommend this bank.

Worst bank. Avoid. They started charging money from our account without emailing or texting us and without our agreement to changing terms from a free business acount that we kept in credit, they then refused to close the account unless we paid them more money even though the balance was zero.

REPORTING TO FCA.

Been with Santander for a long time; it used to be a good bank, but it has become incredibly unhelpful. They told me I had to update my details by a certain date, and because I did not do it straight away, they blocked my account. As a result, none of my direct debits went out, my mortgage was not paid, and I then had to use their portal – which was extremely complicated – just to get the account reopened and restart every single direct debit. This could easily have damaged my credit rating through no real fault of my own.Three months later, they asked for exactly the same information again and threatened to shut my account if I did not provide it, even though they already had the documents. One part of Santander seems to have my details, but the business banking side apparently does not, so I have to upload everything all over again. I have never known another bank behave like this, and they should not be blocking accounts when nothing has changed. I will be leaving them – there are plenty of other banks out there that actually value their customers.

Awful, abusive of power, couldn't care less about customer service. 9 years business banking with them. They stopped paying standing orders without telling me. Said I hadn't sent them 'required' information, which they had not asked for. So they said the account was on hold, no transactions possible. But they still managed to charge and take £10 for admin of the account. A new charge they have invented, which I have not agreed to, they just imposed. When I asked them to do something about this to show they understand the failure and abuse of power they refused. No refund, no apology, just more pressure on me to spend time for them. Said they had followed process. (ie their internal process is to abuse customers)

Santander are a bank devoid of integrity or ethics. Trust is at the center of the banking relationship but Santander is not trustworthy. For example, SMEs banked using account that were unequivocally free for life. Further, this was defined as being forever providing that there was no change to the law. Despite massive cost savings - for example who writes cheques these day, and who uses telephone banking when online access is provided - Santander have decided to break their commitments and charge £120 per year. This is an egregious act implemented which sacrifices decency in the pursuit of greed.

I am currently looking for a new business bank account. I don't use Santander but was considering it. After reading these reviews I will look elsewhere. Hopefully someone in management bothers to read the reviews and sees that negative reviews from existing customers definitely influences potential new customers. 1.3 stars is enough to put me off. Looks like Santander need to do better!

Simply the worst business banking experience ever!

I have a current account with Santander and have been trying for days (unsuccessfully) to log in to my account in order to transfer money.

I am a UK resident but currently in the Philippines, and there seems to be no choices available to receive an OTP other than via my UK phone number, which I cannot access here. I don't understand why there is no alternative way to receive this, such as WhatsApp (which has my same UK number) or email. Other banks and institutions do provide a choice, but not Santander, which keeps telling me to log in to my account - which I can't for the reasons outlined above.

I've had several 'chats' with a robot called Sandi which just goes round in circles and gets me nowhere. Why doesn't Santander consider customers who are abroad and who cannot always log in in the usual way or call their offices?

Their system is very outdated and frustrating for customers, with no alternative way of receiving OTP's, allowing customers temporarily outside the UK to actually log in. Our money is with this bank (for now) but we cannot access it.
They need to recognise that there is a world outside the UK, and to step up.

Terrible service, not even deserving of one star.

Had a free forever business account for over 12 years now without a letter of notice they are charging me £9.99 a month fees.
WHAT A CON AND SCAMM
Charging me me to have my money in their bank

Santander promised "free forever" in large print on all their marketing materials for their business current account when they took over Abbey National. They have now reneged on this promise and are charging £9.99 a month for their business current account (they've given it a new name but it is the same thing).

The Financial Ombudsman seems to be telling customers that this is fine because the small print said that they would only change this promise if the regulatory environment changed - and the regulatory environment is always changing so this term apparently made the promise meaningless from the beginning.

Why would any of us ever trust anything a financial company says on their marketing materials in the future?

ABYSMAL

For all of the years Ive been wih them, they've been abysmal. They're incompetent and complacently so.
Every single interaction I had with them was a problem. Now you can't even send them a message - you have to phone up and jump through duplicate security hoops in they multiply-flawed automated and manual systems.

Following their introduction of a monthly fee I told them to close the account. That was many months ago I've also called them twice, but still - the account is still open. Since it's empty they can't take any fees, but - shutt he damned account like I told you to do!

If I could, I would take the (very wealthy) architects of this fiasco and put them all in prison.

Disgraceful.

Untrustworthy, poor customer service.avoid

Terrible bank. Been on phone to them all morning - twice I have waited 20 minutes to speak to someone and as soon as someone comes on the line the call is disconnected. They keep trying to get you to do things online but some things cannot be done online e.g. when acting as a power of attorney.

The had an excellent customer service, but various parts of the service have become a law unto their own, very difficult to deal with. You'd think a complaints department would seek to improve or at least maintain their service, not a bit of it. They'd rather tell you black was white than address any failings. Avoid, there are much better banks nowadays