Readers may recall that late last year I blogged about my girlfriend’s family’s problems with Abbey when they tried closing her late stepfather’s account. That particular incident ended happily as if by magic once the Observer got involved.

I wish I could say that was the end of the matter. Sadly, it is not the case. I’ll let Alex’s mother’s letter to the Financial Ombudsman do the rest of the talking - there really isn’t anything my usual brand of sarcasm can add:

I have enduring power of attorney for my mother. She has recently moved into a care home and I wanted to purchase an insurance policy to cover the fees for her care home.

In order to fund this we needed to release the funds (approx £16,000) in her savings accounts with Abbey. I wrote to Abbey on 8th April, enclosing a copy of the POA form, asking them to transfer the funds to my mother’s current account.

A week later I phoned Abbey who said they had no record of having received the letter and could not speak to me because I am not the account holder.

The next day I received a letter from Abbey acknowledging that I had sent a copy of the POA forms and asking me to fill in a number of Abbey forms to register that I had POA for my mother. I did this immediately and sent it back to them - I had it faxed and posted from the local Abbey branch.

I then spoke to Abbey twice and was given conflicting messages - one person said they would transfer the money once the POA had been registered the other said that this would not be possible.

On the 24th April I received a letter from Abbey acknowledging that the POA had been registered in relation to my mother’s accounts. I didn’t receive anything else from Abbey and the cheque did not arrive.

On the 6th May I phoned Abbey again and spoke to someone called Maria in their Belfast office. Maria told me that a cheque would be put in the post and sent first class by the end of that day. It wasn’t.

On 7th May I phoned Abbey again but this time was put through to their Glasgow office and was told that they could not help because they could not see if any action had been taken; they did however give me the number of the Belfast office. I then called the Belfast office direct and spoke to Chris who refused to discuss any of this with me as I was not the account holder. I explained that I had POA and this had been registered with Abbey, but he still refused to talk to me about the account. Even when I quoted the reference from the letter from Abbey saying that POA had been registered he said he could do nothing!

Eventually he agreed to speak to their legal department and got the POA registered. He then said that a cheque would be put in the post that day and would phone me to confirm that this had been actioned. He did not phone and the cheque did not arrive.

On the 8th May I phoned Abbey again and spoke to someone called Miles who was very helpful - he said that the cheque had not been sent despite all the assurances and that he did not know why. He once again agreed that the cheque would be sent that day and that he would phone me on my mobile to confirm that this had in fact happened. Again he did not phone and the cheque has not arrived.

We have been given a one week extension by the insurance company to raise the funds but if Abbey do not send us the cheque that quote will no longer be valid and the price will increase by approx £6,000. The price of these policies has increased considerably since the credit crunch.

On the 14th May I spoke to Laura in the Belfast call centre. I was told that although they have a record of my power of attorney registration, they have no record of my request to close the account and send a cheque. I was told this would need investigating and that they would phone me back in 24-72 hours and would mark this as urgent.

At this point I also formally lodged a complaint, by e-mail, with the Abbey complaints department.

By the 19th May I had still not had any contact from Abbey and the cheque had not arrived so I sought legal advice from which?

They advised me that Abbey’s abysmal customer care and inability to respond within a reasonable time frame had contravened the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982.

I once again wrote and e-mailed the Abbey complaints department to this effect. I have still not had a response beyond a standard acknowledgment of the receipt of my complaint.

On 21st I phoned the Belfast office – a recorded message said that all their systems were down, so I phoned the complaints department and spoke to Sam who gave me a reference number and promised to phone back. He didn’t.

I phoned Abbey again on 23rd May, I spoke to the Belfast office again as the complaints department apparently closes at 5pm. Anthony said that they would investigate, as once again he could not find the POA registration, and phone me back. They didn’t.

I phoned again on the 24th and was referred to the ISA customer services helpdesk. Gillian said they would have to contact the ISA administration team who would not be in until Tuesday. I was told that referrals take 24-72 hours but they would mark it urgent. She also said that they only had records of me having phoned once – I have records of at least 10 phone calls to date.

At no point so far has anyone returned a phone call. The only acknowledgement I have received is a letter dated the 24th April confirming my POA registration and confirmation of receipt of my complaint on 22nd May.

My advice to anyone thinking of banking with Abbey? Don’t. In the meantime, any helpful journalist out there want to take this up? This whole sorry mess is haemorrhaging real money now.

In the meantime, here are some related links:

• Abbey fined for mishandling complaints
• Abbey tops Bad Bank League
• The slow and lingering death of Abbey National

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So much for The Power of the Blog - I had a salutary reminder of the power of the mainstream media this week.

My girlfriend can be found beaming from page 17 of the Observer Cash supplement today under the headline Abbey bids to rediscover good habits. For those of you who haven’t been following the Observer’s Why Are We Waiting? campaign, the issue concerns the failure of Abbey’s probate and bereavement centre to release dead relatives’ accounts on the basis that apparently too many people died in 2006.

What I can vouch for is this: Alex and her mother have spent months pursuing this, taking days off work to have meetings with bank staff, making phone calls that go unreturned, getting fobbed off with standard impersonal letters. For the situation to get sorted out, what it ultimately took was a single phone call from a journalist. Either Huma Qureshi has mafia-like powers of persuasion, in which case her byline photo doesn’t do her justice, or banks really are craven when it comes to bad publicity.

When I read claims that ‘There is room for people to make mistakes - but if mistakes do happen, then we have procedures in place to deal with things quickly,’ I am thus sceptical.

The real scandal is that if this had concerned a public sector organisation, the story would have been on the front page of at least one major national newspaper. Yet for some reason we seem much more ready to suspend our critical faculties when it concerns a private company. I’m not blaming the media here, for understandable reasons. It is ultimately the mores of the general public that relegates this to the money pages. It is as if Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market” has taken on semi-mythic status - people assume they don’t need to keep a wary eye out because something called the “market” will do it for them.

These problems arise all the time, and time and again they appear to be rooted in an assumption within banks that they can afford to try it on on the basis that so long as most people don’t make a fuss.

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