Cater Allen Reviews 

Having banked with Cater Allen for over 20 years (previously as Flemings), they have now sunk to such low levels it's downright embarassing. I found it reassuring to find so many other 1* reviews on here that it's not just me who is staggered that any company, let alone an FCA-regulated *bank*, could dump such a heap of untested incompetent rubbish as their new online banking system on their customers.

My pick of the bunch:

* The website times you out after about 3 minutes - no matter if you're mid-sentence writing them an email, out you go... logged off. Cater Allen state that is deliberate, for my security (LOL). They state they won't be changing it (LOL again).

* If you manage to type your email within the 3 minute limit (impossible really, you have to copy and paste it back and forth to avoid losing it all), you can't include such outlandish, dangerous, evil characters as a colon or a bracket. But it doesn't tell you the offending character, it just refuses to send it and tells you what they do allow so you have to hunt through your text trying to find what's wrong... and times you out before you can find it! Seriously? In the 21st century?! Cater Allen state that is deliberate, for my security (LOL). They state they won't be changing it (LOL again).

* You cannot pay the same amount twice to the same account - eg. wages to a husband and wife with a joint account, or 2 different invoices to the same company. It's not allowed. No matter if they have completely different references on the payments, it's rejected at the final step after entering and reentering PAC codes and phone codes - you have to phone them or (this is a secret, they told me after my 3rd complaint), if you wait 10 minutes you can try it again - of course you're automatically logged out by then so you have to log back in again too. Cater Allen state that is deliberate, for my security (LOL). They state they won't be changing it (LOL again).

* If you try to make an immediate payment they present a red warning box that it might be a scam - you even have to tick a box to acknowledge you've ignored their warning to proceed. No matter if you've paid that account 1000 times before or if it's HMRC... SCAM warning, "Are you sure?", red font, enter your PAC code again, enter a phone code again. Are you sure you're sure? Seriously? All to pay a few quid to HMRC? Cater Allen state that is deliberate, for my security (LOL). They state they won't be changing it (LOL again).

* They display an old bank account that doesn't exist and was dissolved years ago. It's the first one in the list, and whatever I do, I first have to select the account I want to do it with - no matter I only have 1 account, I have to select that account from a drop-down list instead of the old closed account before I can even see transactions. Cater Allen state that is deliberate, it's an "FCA requirement" (LOL). They state they won't be changing it (LOL again).

* They failed to transfer across all of my payees so I lost half of them and I'm expected to re-enter them all again from scratch myself. Once they said they would re-instate them but of course they didn't actually do it. They stated it weas due to an "IT issue" (yes, incompetence!!).

* Nothing fits on one screen - everything is double or triple spaced with interlaced red warnings so it's about 3 screens to scroll down just to enter 3 fields of data to make a payment.

You'd think this IT system was written by a schoolkid, but to be honest a primary school kid would write a better system than this. The worst thing of all is that they clearly never tested any of it, never trialled it with customers, and there was nothing wrong with the previous system that worked just fine. And they won't fix a thing.

Embarassing. Time to move bank.

THIS INCREDIBLY AWFUL BANK!

They paid a client of mine 8K when it was supposed to be 800.00 POUNDS, not 8K. tHEY EVEN CHECKED THE RECORDING OF THE CALL.

SIMPLY A JOKE OF A BUSINESS and this is NOT the first time they have provided an atrocious service!

I am taking this to a lawyer and pushing to get the FCA involved and have them investigated. Please anyone reading this contact me if you want to push a claim through a lawyer and the FCA.

AVOID THIS BANK AT ALL COSTS!

I have been with them for over 20 years as a business customer and during the past five years they have progressed from reasonable to non-existent. It's almost impossible to get anything done. It has taken me over 7 months to open another account with them and still not made it. Their staff and processes are totally useless.
It was a good bank 20 years ago. How the mighty have fallen!

HMRC have allowed small businesses to defer tax payments as a way of providing support during the Covid-19 business disruption. I cancelled my HMRC VAT DD early in April using the online bank portal. However, I was shocked to see that the HMRC VAT DD payment was still paid in May! On querying this with Cater Allen support, they advise they have no record of me viewing my direct debits at all, inferring that I did not cancel the DD in the first place. There have been other problems with my account being blocked when making online payments, which the bank claim is due to timeouts during the payment process. I have Virgin 200 MB/s fibre optic cable, so timeouts are unlikely through my internet connection.... must be a problem with Cater Allen's IT infrastructure.

I am now moving to a regular high street bank with proper services and banking infrastructure.

For those that decide to stay with Cater Allen, I recommend you take a screen print of your online transactions to save as evidence that your transactions were actually initiated.

Genuinely horrendous. Useless staff. No branches. No faster payments. No banking app. No support for businesses post or during Covid19. Total waste of time and money. Santander should be ashamed. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.

I’ve been with them for over 20+ years and leaving soon, off to Starling.

Ever since they were assimilated into Santander they have got progressively worse.
No real-time banking (an aspiration for the future allegedly), poor website transition, near to useless website, not 24/7 anymore, immature IT systems and Santander just keep reducing the service by screwing more money out of it.
I’ve complained many many times but nothing gets done, they’re haemorrhaging customers at an alarming rate.

Even moving from your business account to personal is an external bill payment! I can actually move money to Monzo from my personal account with them roughly 2 hours quicker. I’ve actually had two disciplinary warnings in work now. I catch a train daily from Bristol to London and buy a weekly ticket at 05:30. You check the night before on the website that says you have funds, you rock up to find that you’ve been declined and as they don’t open til 08:00am I have to wait until they do...which is why I only use them as a DD/SO bill paying account having switched personal day to day with Monzo and Starling.

This is because they use a separate differed interest debit card system that is only update a few times a day!!!, so you have to ring in to get your balance on the card manually updated. They are a disaster that promise to change “sometime in the future”.

I dream of the Flemings days, (what a bank) and like many have said this used to be the IT Contractor bank.
I’m one, and many of us view the assimilation into the Santander system offerings to be a disaster, functionality gaps, no inter account transfer and managed / tested very poorly; who signed this off?

I actually feel very sorry for the staff, they used to be excellent, outstanding customer service but now they seem so down; lions lead by donkeys after profit.

A joke of a bank slowly going down the pan.

After 20 years with Cater Allen, I had to move. The recent online software 'upgrade' is a complete joke and feels like it wasn't tested properly before release. A client of mine who also banks with Cater Allen could not make an online payment from their account to mine because they were on the old system. I have given this review 2 stars rather than 1 as their phone service has always been good to me. A real shame - their online banking has remained in the dark ages. I would strongly recommend setting up your business banking elsewhere at the moment.

Deplorable customer services provided by the Team Leaders, Managers of the Bank. I am horrified by how many people actually agreed with me on Trust Pilot. The new service after 2 years of being helpful and running smoothly has completely deteriorated. The customer service has been so bad and for no reason my business card will not respond to the new PIN they sent. They have given advice which does not work and on complaining their response was: contact the Ombudsman? The responses are sarcastic and personal. No use of my card for a month so ending up using my personal account (take note HMRC, not my fault) for business expenses. Of course, all their advice states nothing is wrong on their side and its my fault the card doesn't work.
I am quite taken aback and have now advised I am switching banks of which their response was 'sorry to see you go'. Thats it! It is a bank referred too by Accountants and Agencies, so for all contractors or self employed outside IR35 workers (genuine companies) I would state in line with the other bad reviews NOT to set up your business with Cater Allen. They don't even have the capacity to work with online HMRC book keeping or online accountants. Everything has to be entered by hand, totally outdated despite the new website, which is tiresome and takes ages to fulfil any type of accounts, previously took 5 minutes now its up to an hour. I don't like moving around and am a loyal customer however I can't condone the attitude of their Senior Management, which in the end is who holds the power to your account despite being a client that causes no issues at all. Shame....

Now the bank is saying they have received nothing from me to change address.... how they are still running as a bank I've no idea. Already 14 pound down to get next day delivery. Now they want me to send it again. 5th time lucky then!. I'm now late with my self assessment because of these f***ing clowns!!!!!

Been reading the reviews of the upgraded on-line banking site and seems that all the reviews agree with me. Horrendous, why bother upgrading something to make it worse. Really hard to use AND a future dated transaction has been dropped. Lucky I checked it

If I could give a ZERO I would.

Truly an absolutely AWFUL bank and business, I honestly do not know where to even start with them as there have been countless abysmal things that they have done!

The Bank has lost a transaction of mine to a client and not resolved it in a month and they have not been able to provide any receipt or tracking ID's of any possible sort.. They've not called back and every time I call I need to explain from the start the whole story again and again and again along with being put on hold for 30/40 minutes then it being hung up!

As I said at the start, all of the comments on Trustpilot are TRUE and I've experienced them all!

PLEASE AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!
PLEASE AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!
PLEASE AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!

We sold our company by way of share transfer and filled in a form which the bank sent us so that we could relinquish our directorship and appoint new directors at the same time . This was done 2 months ago and to date nothing has happened . Direct debits were cancelled without my authority,and when I phoned the bank,they said they cannot answer to me, as I am no longer the director, and the new directors will have to get in touch with them. When they phoned them they were none the wiser as they would not give them any answer.i have been with this bank for 40 years,and I would not recommend any one to open an account 😡😡😡Totally incompetent

After a horrible few months, Cater Allen have rolled out an improved version of their internet banking site.

Most of the issues noted by many Trustpilot reviews have been addressed.

The site is far, far easier to use.

Thanks to the team at Cater Allen for listening to feedback and making life easier for your customers.

Useless bank! Is it a Bank or a shady operation in a far flung developing country?

So far have lost two payments of mine, one taking up to a month to recover, so leaving me without pay for a month. No follow up call from customer services to let me know where the money was. Needed me to get a trace put on the funds from the source, and then the minute CA traced it, miraculously, the funds were in my account the next day without explanation. Still waiting for a reason. You leave your details and they NEVER EVER call you back.

Just lost another one of my payments, which over the Christmas period is unacceptable. Still waiting to find out where it is.

Everything is done on the phone. why, can't it be done online? Thank God my account hasn't migrated to the new accounts yet as I hear a lot of negativity around this.

I will definitely change Banks once my payment is received.

They lost our business transactions, made us resend the request and then delayed it. We ended up calling a useless customer service group at least 6 times, wasting our time and causing financial loss to the business. Stay away from Cater Allen.

A poor online banking interface.
subjective security questions from new staff members. Major long waiting times to get through to someone. No same day payments. New staff members giving out wrong and subjective information. There is nothing that this bank can do that a high street bank can't. Did I mention a poor online banking interface?

Cater Allen does not fulfil any of the minimum customer expectations.
As usual, Santander has downgraded a customer-oriented UK business to the most disappointing banking organisation.
My understanding that they current aim is to discourage existing customers to keep banking with them, only because they've not been able to provide the same level of customer satisfaction since they took over.
I've now moved all my assets to a well established British bank.
When opening those new accounts, I did wonder: why did I ever bank with Santander/CA??

I don't think Cater Allen have quite found their way into the 21st century. They're part of Santander, yet 'Faster Payments' from a Santander account to Cater Allen are anything but. OK, I know they probably have different systems but up to 2 days? Really? They're just about instant between any other bank (I regularly make payments between Santander and Barclays). Trying to make a CHAPS payment today (at a cost of £25) to complete on a property purchase. Again, instant everywhere else, but Cater Allen? NO! They want to wait a few hours after the instruction is received and even then we don't know if it's going to happen today. Appaling.

It's a real shame, as I have used this bank for around 10 years for all my business accounts. The telephone banking was excellent, and the website just did everything that was required, with a simple interface. Perfect.

They have recently upgraded and it's now almost completely unusable. My business accounts are buried away somewhere. I can no longer download statements which automatically load in to my software. Transferring between business accounts can now only be done on the phone, and when I wrote an email through their internal system it took days for a reply. Oh yes, when you call up they tell you that you have to try a range of different browsers as it 'doesn't really work' with Safari - which is the default installed browser on Macs, which are the world best selling computer brand. They are still polite, but you certainly feel as though the people I am now talking too have very little knowledge, like the vast majority of banks these days - Cater Allen used to be a cut above though.

I'm very disappointed as I could call up and the very first person I spoke to could carry out everything I needed, from complicated international currency transfers, through to simple tasks.

Why oh why did they think they had to change something that really wasn't even broken. They never claimed to be a high street bank with an all singing and dancing website, and I think most customers knew this and were fine with it.

I think it's time to move bank - a hassle for me, and a shame for them as I have a £200k in my business savings accounts which just sits there.

I'm an old Fleming customer and have banked with Fleming and then Cater Allen after the name change since 1999. Over the years they have been without dought the best bank I've used, well until 2 months ago.

This was always the bank for IT Contractors back in the day, they have a lot of IT savvy customers, well until 2 months ago. As other reviewers have stated I can only guess this is a bid to leave the market. This is what you get with 100 monkeys and 100 laptops and no sane human in the release process.

I'm sad that after 20 years I have to move (to Starling), RIP Cater Allen