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Mike Fry, director of Cheshire-based IFA Halton Insurance Ltd, said Alliance & Leicester had improved a lot compared with how it used to treat advisers. He said the lender was very much "on the ball" and was impressed with the service provided.

Mr Fry said: "It was good, very good. The application was done online and went through smoothly. I was updated about the progress of the application by email all the way through and it also has an online facility for you to be able to check on the progress of your application yourself.

"It was not so easy to get through on the telephone I might add. If you actually wanted to talk to someone it was not that easy. Having said that, it is not easy to get through to anyone at all at the moment.

"If you ring any mortgage company it is proving very difficult to get through. I am not going to be ringing up about something basic but I will be asking about something that is not easy to get an answer to so you do need to ring someone to find out.

"Once you get through to A&L there are no problems at all. It is just getting through in the first place."

Lender says...

Viviane Clement, head of intermediary sales for Alliance & Leicester, said: "We are delighted the adviser was pleased with the service we offer overall. Our telephony team work to a very high standard and should be able to deal with enquiries efficiently and quickly.

"However, the comments about not easily being able to get through are disappointing. We have recently introduced a single contact telephone number for intermediaries to make it more convenient for them to contact us as part of an ongoing scheme to ensure our service to them is of a high standard.

"I feel confident intermediaries will in future be able to contact us quickly and simply by calling our new dedicated intermediary line."

FACT

Alliance and Leicester has 252 branches.

Nationwide

Rory Clayton, director of Hollowell-based IFA Clayton and Company, said Nationwide was quite good from a new mortgage point of view but when a client needed to remortgage he had come across some difficulties.

Mr Clayton said: "The client had quite heavy problems with it. They did the original mortgage then they topped it up again separately on three different occasions. This meant they now had four mortgage accounts.

"Although the client was quite prepared to pay the penalties, Nationwide would not remortgage for existing clients.

"What we eventually got them to do was allow a big further advance, which consolidated all of £10,000 in a further advance so they only had two mortgage accounts but it was an absolute nightmare because they did not seem to know what they were doing and they were so slow."

Lender says...

Matthew Wyles, group executive director of non-retail at Nationwide, said: "The first thing to note with this case is it is pretty unusual to see so many further advances off the back of one main advance.

"Given the rare nature of the situation, it is true that our current processes do not deliver a very elegant solution for the customer and we are reviewing this complex issue as part of our huge systems replacement programme.

"I am sorry to hear that in this instance the customer had a difficult experience and we acknowledge that our processes in this context are less than perfect. I would emphasise, however, that the combination of circumstances made this case unusual."

FACT

Nationwide is the largest building society in the world and committed to staying mutual.