They never had a chance....
Like most people in their late teens, money was used to fund a social life and not for saving, but to show my dear old mum, I opened an account at the Leicester Building Society and put a small but respectable amount in their top interest easy access account. I surprised myself by not taking it all out the following week and kept it there for quite a while.

Then suddenly it was announced one day how the Leicester was merging with the Alliance Building Society and how much better off us savers would be. Fine, I thought as I saw how the interest rate was slightly higher for the Gold Account at the newly refurbished Alliance & Leicester branch.

Several months later, I needed some money for a holiday and having no other resource had to finally admit defeat and raid some of the savings account. As I handed over my passbook to withdraw the money I casually commented how I was surprised that my passbook hadn't been rebranded to A & L Gold. "That's because you don't have an A & L Gold Account" said the assistant. Yours is the old Leicester Gold Account that pays 0.0000000001% interest (or something similar)."

I was not happy and told the assistant how could a Building Society effectively operate two accounts with the same name and how misleading to introduce the second at the time when everything was changing. It pissed me off rotten and therefore a letter was dispatched where I basically accused the A & L of fraud by confusing their customers.

A & L wrote back and apologised for any confusion and changed my account to the higher interest one and backdated all interest - a massive £32.10 which obviously was a shock to their system and probably the start of the downfall before Santander waded in and took them over.

However by then me and my money had long gone.
(Norfolk Enchants, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 1:16, Reply)