Santander España Reviews 

I went to Santander in Calle Canalejas, Velez Malaga, 29700 and saw a very nice young lady . Her name was Jessica Munoz Moreno. She was efficient and dealt with my problem straight away and with no fuss. Whilst we were talking she also went through a few other things with me. A really nice bank experience.

No Te Lo Podrías Inventar (English version below)
Imagínate mi sorpresa cuando entré en Banco Santander, C/Aquilón 2, Pozuelo de Alarcón, para abrir una cuenta bancaria solo para que me informaran que había muerto en 2009! Sí, leíste bien: fui declarado fallecido hace más de una década. Ahora, he visto algunas cosas locas en mi tiempo, pero que me digan que soy un fantasma se lleva la palma.

La saga no termina ahí. Tratando de desentrañar esta absurda situación, se me ocurrió que esto podría tener algo que ver con mi exmarido, quien ha estado empeñado en hacerme la vida imposible desde nuestro divorcio. ¿Presentó él un certificado de defunción falso para fastidiarme o alguien simplemente ingresó en el sistema y me declaró muerto? Tu suposición es tan buena como la mía, pero es una teoría plausible dado nuestras batallas legales en curso.

Exigiendo mi derecho de acceso a mis datos personales bajo la ley española, solicité a Banco Santander que proporcionara una divulgación completa. ¿Había algún documento como un certificado de defunción en sus archivos? ¿Quién les informó de mi supuesta muerte? El banco me aseguró que mis datos fueron actualizados después de verificar que estoy vivo, pero todavía me deben una explicación completa.

Y después de tres meses, la única respuesta de Banco Santander fue gaslighting, afirmando que no tienen registros de mi supuesta muerte. Supongo que no tienen "interés" en responderme...o ¿lo habré soñado todo? Por eso esta reseña mordaz...

Como alguien directamente afectado por este desastre, tengo derecho a saber cómo se manejaron mal mis datos. Esto no es solo un error burocrático: es una violación de la confianza y la seguridad personal. A pesar de la corrección de los registros por parte del banco, la falta de transparencia y el error inicial son incomprensibles.

Banco Santander, tienen algunas explicaciones que dar. Gracias por hacer que el ya desafiante acto de abrir una cuenta bancaria en España sea una experiencia surrealista. Su turno.

Saludos a la absurdidad, Jill Arcaro Gordon

You Couldn’t Make This Up
Imagine my surprise when I walked into Banco Santander, C/Aquilón 2, Pozuelo de Alarcón, to open a bank account only to be informed that I had died in 2009! Yes, you read that right—I was declared deceased over a decade ago. Now, I’ve seen some wild things in my time, but being told I’m a ghost takes the cake.

The saga doesn’t end there. Trying to unravel this absurdity, it dawned on me that this might have something to do with my ex-husband who has been hell-bent on making my life difficult since our divorce. Did he file a false death certificate to mess with me or did someone simply enter into the system and declare me as dead? Your guess is as good as mine, but it's a plausible theory given our ongoing legal battles.

Demanding my right to access my personal data under Spanish law, I requested Banco Santander to provide a full disclosure. Was there any documentation like a death certificate in their files? Who informed them of my supposed death? The bank assured me that my details were updated after verifying my living, breathing self, but they still owe me a thorough explanation.

And after three months, Banco Santander’s only response was to gaslight me, claiming they have no records of my supposed death. I guess they have no "interest" in answering me... Hence this scathing review...

As someone directly impacted by this debacle, I'm entitled to know how my data was mishandled. This isn’t just a bureaucratic bungle—it's a breach of trust and personal security. Despite the bank's correction of their records, the lack of transparency and the initial error are beyond comprehension.

Banco Santander, you’ve got some explaining to do. Thanks for making the already challenging act of opening a bank account in Spain a surreal experience. Your move.

Cheers to absurdity, Jill Arcaro Gordon

The worst bank experience ever. Stay away. Untrustworthy, unreliable, indolent, fraudulent institution

If possible I would have given even Lower than zero . I opened the account in this bank 2 months ago and since then I am suffering to access my own money.. non existent customer support especially if u do not know Spanish . They should stop opening expat accounts

App never works properly. It is a complete disaster.
SUPER expensive bank.
HORRIBLE service.

I used the "switch bank" service provided by Santander to switch to them. I asked that all direct debits and balances be transferred to Santander and the account with the old bank to be closed. But the process was hopeless and not a single direct debit was transferred. One of the direct debit companies fined me for a missed payment. I asked Santander to cover this. I had done everything correctly and this problem arose through no fault of mine. Very disappointingly Santander simply responded with "sorry mate, but not our problem"!! They repeatedly insisted I speak with my old bank to seek compensation from them. I tried this, against my better judgement, and of course the old bank insisted that it was not their responsibility! Santander really could do better! Very disappointing service so far!

Terrible service when you go to either one of their branches. Slow call center

Rude & unhelpful staff in the Diagonal Mar branch
Taking my business to Caixa Bank

What a terrible bank to have to visit. Waiting times are atrocious. No care for their customers. They are only getting a single star because I can’t rate them lower. After over an hour wait at the La Línea branch 1 customer has been seen to. No other staff appear to be working or even care. Looking for another bank pronto!!!!!

I rated Santander Spain 1 Star as there is not a 0 Star option. Be very careful with this bank as they will not explain the conditions of their mortgages to you so the first year seems just fine and after one year they will hike up your payment by 28%. I have never been so exploited in my life and they specifically do this to customers that don't speak Spanish. I highly recommend NEVER working with this bank in Spain as they are complete criminals. I have had to go find a new mortgage and pay so many fees to change immediately. I am in shock this is an international bank and cannot believe they would do this to any of their clients.

If you want help with your account, don’t waste your time going into this office. The people there have no time for their clients, they will barely even look at you, just give you a phone number to call and pretend to smile as you leave. Santander have a history of rejecting transfers to my account, and then burying their head in the sand, failing to take accountability for their numerous and interminable errors.

I strongly encourage anyone considering opening an account with this bank to read all the reviews.
How can any bank obtain a rating of 1 star (I am sure it would be 0 stars if possible). They offer services they do not provide and apparently do no care at all about negative feedback. Customer service they dó not understand.

Worst customer service I've ever seen! Nobody in the bank wants to be helpful, they give short answers or refer to call the call center. The call center then tells you to go to the bank! Everybody says different things!!

Seems pretty useless to leave a review as it's a bank and they usually DGAF, but also because there's so many negative ones, there's no way they read them if they did that before.

I'm actually just satisfied with the bank, but what I don't like is the spammy notifications in the mobile app. It's like something from the 90s. Other banks in the EU have really transformed into digital, customer-first entities, but it seems Santander and maybe other banks in Spain see customers like id***s, only making offers to buy, lend money, and never about new features, about how to use money you have to invest etc. They should just study banks like KBC in Belgium and try to change a little bit. In other words, notifications are not yet in the 2020s mindset of helping the customer lead better quality life.

Let me tell you about our experience with SANTANDER INSURANCE. We upgraded one of our insurances to a more expensive one and Santander did not stop the old insurance – despite confirming they would – and kept charging us for months (which we only noticed late as it was cleverly packaged up with other products from Santander). We raised this issue with our 'gestor' (bank representative) at Santander, and then this nightmare began:

1. Our representative could help us contract the insurance, but couldn't help us to cancel it due to the Spanish law on Protection of Personal Data (?!) despite it being their mistake not cancelling the old insurance at the time.

2. We were given a phone number to call, but they could not help us there either so we were given another email to message for the cancelation. This customer service eventually canceled the insurance but did not reply to our questions regarding a refund for the past period.

3. We had to submit multiple claims to Santander Insurances to get a refund for the incorrectly charged amount.

4. Our 'gestor' (bank representative) stopped replying to us 2 months ago completely. She should be our main point-of-contact for Santander and she decided to ignore our emails even when we asked about a different topic. This is really troubling, especially given that she was super willing to help when we requested new services and when contracting the insurance incorrectly.

5. We explained the situation to the official support regarding complaints at Santander and explained our representative's lack of response. The reply we got was ASTONISHING AT LEAST: the bank's branch disagrees with the claims we made and believes our treatment was appropriate and since they "find different versions, accepting one of them would mean questioning the veracity of the other, which logically is not appropriate." (original text: "en esta ocasión nos encontramos con versiones diferentes, aceptar una de ellas supondría tanto como poner en duda la veracidad de la otra, lo que lógicamente no resulta procedente."). HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Shouldn't the customer be given the benefit of the doubt and the case investigated? In my opinion, there will often be two versions of reality when someone raises a complaint and if the default behavior is to stop investigating these, what are they really doing? I replied that I could prove that our main point-of-contact stopped replying to us and I shared our email conversation.

6. The proposed solution from Santander for the lack of response from our bank representative was for us to GO TO THE BANK PERSONALLY AND REQUEST A NEW REPRESENTATIVE. Do we live in the 19th century?

So, in summary: if you want to contract insurance with Santander, think twice as it is super easy to sign up but SANTANDER WILL ESSENTIALLY STOP HELPING YOU WHEN THERE IS AN ISSUE WITH YOUR INSURANCE and you have to chase them through multiple calls and emails. In a just world, the error made by Santander would have taken 1 email instead of a full week. Also, the INTERNAL ORGANISATION OF CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS A MESS: you will not be helped effectively, but bounced around many departments – each having 1 tiny responsibility, and in case of conflicting views the bank will conclude it is INAPPROPRIATE TO INVESTIGATE THE TRUTH.

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P.s. Meanwhile, conveniently another insurance of ours jumped in price by 33% year-on-year.. This was one of the queries our representative was reluctant to look into.

45 minutes and still waiting. I have been without a bank card now for four months. Santander´s solution have it sent to the bank and we will charge you a €60 service charge for using internal post. For a multinational global bank they behave like back street loan sharks with the same level of customer service.

Finally I got an answer (57 minutes on hold) and they put me through to a German operative and being Danish..... I had pressed button 1 to be answered in English

The saga continues.....

this bank is not customer service oriented and they feel legitimate to threaten you and give the worth client service ever, no need to say much as when you see 92% of unhappy customer so now you have an another
it is a shame for Rafael Nadal to be your sponsor as I trust it affect his legacy and image
Rita at the customer service can

Their customer service explicitly told me that the international transfer would be made in Euros. This was a lie. They converted the money into the local currency of the destination country. Cost me 500 euros. This was after multiple misleading explanations from them again explicitly telling lies and signing me up for programs that will be advantagous in fees for international transfers. They are basically defrauding their own customers. STAY WELL AWAY

i decided to buy a car in Germany. so i came to the bank and confirmed that the sum for transfer is ok. they assured me that everything will be ok, transfer will work in Germany and the sum is less than the limit for my account.

When i was at day X in the office of autohaus in Stuttgart, i was not able to do the transaction. the app shown an error when i tried to do the transaction (previously i was able to do the prepayment of 500€).

So santander failed in the very important moment. I consider it as unreliable bank. From that time I use santander card to pay for vegetables and fruits in supermarket. It suits perfectly for such payments. But don't expect more

Abysmal customer service, did transfer one of my funds to another Santander fund. I was not notified of any commission being charged. Tried calling my account manager and my local office , they never pick up the phone. After 4 days I was told nothing could be done. I am out of pocket for just consolidating my funds with Santander.
Overall a very unjust bank with a non existent actitude to help its customers. I will be switching banks as soon as possible.