Santander Children's Saving Account

People at bank counters are idiots. Tried to bank the contents of my son's piggy bank and they said they could not accept it! We had two bank accounts and each book had each child's deposits in, they banked ALL money in both books into one account! They lost £20.00 pounds and tried to make me look an idiot and a liar to the ever-growing queue behind me and said I'd have to wait until the end of the business day to find out if they were £20.00 out at the end of day tally - which they were and they finally deposited into the account - the WRONG account again. IDIOTS - SURREY QUAYS BRANCH! Husband tried to set up direct debit from high street bank - told can not be done. Interest rate - good, Service - rotten!

my wife and myself opened this account for our daughter 14 years ago we have had friendly service every time we or our daughter have been to any abbey branch but mainly the interest has been brilliant they also accept any amount of coins as long as they are counted and baged this is great for a child

As the last reviewer, I also have had 6 years of trying to change my son's address !!!! After numerous phone calls (fat lot of good that is they can do nothing over the phone) and countless trips to the Abbey branch I gave up and closed the account, am now looking for something else, based on these reviews think i might as well stick it under the matress!!!!

We moved 3 years ago. Obviously, I sent a change of address letter. No response, but too busy to realise at that time.Each time I subsequently wrote to complain and remind them of previous instructions to change the mailing address (6 letters in total), they would write back to say it was all taken care of. On the last occasion Abbey National managed to change my son's address but not my daughter's and the annual statement of account was again sent to the address we left 3 years ago.When I wrote to the complaints department to say I had lost all confidence in them and wanted the children's savings accounts closed immediately, they wrote back to say they were looking into it. Into what - I had not asked for an investigation this time, having finally realised they were utterly incompetent . I provided an itemised list of actions to help them close the accounts and even that was beyond them. So I wasted 40 more minutes of my time queueing in a branch to close the accounts.

I have had nothing but problems since I opened up my abbey national childrens saving accounts for my children here.....the account keeps having a hold put on for no reason and I am sick and tired of it........

My son has £10,000 + invested elsewhere. Because of the way Abbey treated him today, all of his money is going to be moved to the Abbey. I have a large Mortgage with Nationwide, but we are moving our mortgage to Abbey too.

Customer service means a lot. The guy at Abbey was superb, a credit to the company.

Abbey National Children's Saving Account is not very good, no one thought it was that good and a lot of them was disappointed, also they said the interest rate is not good.

Abbey has no redeeming features to its service. 3 moths after making the application and numerous telephone calls, followed by promises that all was correct and the "Welcome Pack" was in the post, nothing; a final telephone call only to be met with a first refusal to discuss the application without my daughter present.

We chose to try and open an account with Abbey for my 9 year old as it is the only bank in our town open all day Saturday- she is too young for a cash card so this was the one. BUT we waited half an hour to see someone and after 20 minutes the computer said no! A current computer glitch means despite being over 7 years old I would still have to be the trustee of the accounts so she still wouldn't be able to manage her own pocket money any withdrawals would have to be made by me!!!

The staff at Abbey National were very friendly in helping us to open the Childrens Saving Bond Account and offered us a choice of opening gift. We were also told that if my child saved he would reveive reward certificates every time he reached a certain level. We were also given a brochure about the Flexible Saver for Kids account that has been written specifically with children in mind. It teaches them what interest is, how banks work and how to save their pocket money. A great help in getting them to start saving from an early age.