cahoot is now total rubbish

Have been using cahoot for a bank for a few years now.

To begin with, they were really good. But in recent times they have gone downhill, and are now complete rubbish.

The on-line banking regularly does not work and says "service is suspended. We are currently updating our systems. This takes approximately 5 minutes. Please wait until the cahoot service is resumed. Thanks for your patience."

Now cahoot is just a branch of Santander. Despite Santander being part of the Faster Payments Service, cahoot does not support Faster Payments, and there are apparently no plans to do so. So it seems if I want 20th century banking, cahoot should be my first choice. No thanks.

Another thing they have started doing is to "accidentally" block my on-line access. When I phone them up to report this, they act like they don't know what it is and say they will have to call me back. After about half a day, they phone back and say it was "mysteriously" blocked for no reason that they can determine. They then say that they can restore access, but first they have to "take me through security". They then tell me that they are restoring access. This seemingly takes about ten minutes, during which time they make various noises to indicate they are going through umpteen different things on their computer. They then tell me that it is done. What confuses me is why they didn't just do it before calling me back, and why I have to sit on the phone listening to them operate their computer for ten minutes. Bizarre.

cahoot now appear to have totally lost the plot and seem to be completely incompetent.

So I am now in the process of moving to another bank.

What the heck is CRALECELECT?

More idiotic behaviour from my utterly useless bank.

A transaction appeared on my credit card statement with the description:

CRALECELECT 44845508105

CRALECELECT? What's that then? A single word Cralecelect? Crale Celect? Google for it? Zero hits.

What about the number 44845508105? Looks a bit like a phone number +44 845 508105. Unfortunately not enough digits.

Why can't my bank pass on some USEFUL information which would help me to identify the merchant?

After some head scratching, I have worked out that it is Cralec Electrical Distributors. I placed an order with Elite Electric, which seems to actually resolve down to Cralec Electrical. Their phone number is 0845 508 1055.

I had placed the order so long ago that I'd actually forgotten about it. Unfortunately they seem to have decided that despite having taken my money, they don't need to actually fulfil my order. I phoned them up today to ask for an ETA. They took my number and said they'd call back. Needless to say they haven't. Ah well.