I’ve been rearranging my finances recently. Two issues have been somewhat annoying.

1) Ryanair changes card charging policy – I literally applied for a new Visa Electron card the day before this was announced. I couldn’t believe it when I read that article. Everytime I hear some news from Ryanair, it’s always BAD news for the consumer. I really don’t want to fly with them but they do get you from A to B and overall they will still work out a bit cheaper than rivals if you know what you’re doing! Following that announcement that they will start charging fees on Visa Electron card holders, I looked at the range of prepaid Mastercards currently on offer but they’re all rather rubbish really (e.g. not free). I just hope some kind bank manager or rich businessman will launch a free prepaid Mastercard easily accessible to most people. Too bad O2′s free prepaid card is a Visa.

Anyway, I did receive my Visa Electorn card very promptly from Halifax. I might as well just keep a few hundred pounds on it in case I need to use another low cost airline that still accepts it. Though I hear the “Electron” brand will be obsolete in a year or so.

2) Santander. This banking giant, which has taken over a few UK high street banks and is the new sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team, has been a rather disappointing experience. I applied for their Santander Zero credit card because it looks like a very good card for travelling, especially since Nationwide started charging for some overseas usage. The Satander Zero credit card offers zero fees and commission on pretty much everything, hence the name. Again, I like free banking. I got the card, after 6 weeks of silence, despite the web page saying that I would hear from them within 5 days of submitting my application. Nevertheless, the card seems to work well but I’m having a huge amount of trouble using the online credit card service. The list of problems is endless including these which I wouldn’t expect from an organisation with profit figures in the multi-billions:

- Error pages are in Spanish for a UK customer base!
- The help buttons don’t work e.g. no help comes up when you are forced to change your security code so you don’t know what the restricted characters are.
- When you do get a help screen, it conflicts with information on the screen e.g. Screen says input 8 numbers. Help says input 5 numbers.

Basically, Santander and Abbey and co are making a hash of their system mergers. I’ve been sent 3 new security numbers and none of them have been much success in logging in. I’ve rung up technical support countless times already and last week they said they would call me on Monday which of course they didn’t. I think another one of their problems is that they’re incredibly slow in getting their snail mail out into the postal network. Letters are usually dated a week old which may mean I attempted to use a security number that’s already expired.

What I find insulting though is that their system makes me look like an idiot – as if I’ve input an 8 digit number wrong 50 times in a row. That’s simply not possible – I’ve been inputting user IDs and passwords 100′s of times a day, everyday of the week for the last 7 or more years and I say I make a mistake in less than 0.1% of all those attempts; Add the fact that I also work with banking systems and understand necessary security measures but Santander is OTT.

If you have patience, then I recommend the Santander Zero credit card because it’s good on paper but don’t expect much in terms of customer service or internet banking. If you can afford it, always set up a direct debit to pay off your full balance so you don’t need to worry about missed payments or rip-off interest charges!