Santander is one of the many banks in Manchester city centre, originally founded in Santander (a Spanish city) in 1857, before coming to the UK in 2010 (with banks branded as Santander), after the bank taken over Abbey. This particular branch, is relatively small compared to other banks in the city centre such as Halifax and Barclays, but still it is a reasonable size to be able to do your basic banking needs. This branch isn't as nice as the likes of Halifax and Lloyds, but it still basically does a job as a "local bank", but still you expect that little bit more in the center of a big town, like Manchester. With a poor situation regarding my current bank, my main purpose of visiting Santander today was to enquire about joining them, I found the rates very poor, and to offer me 1/4 of what Halifax and lloyds had offered, with no other services to make it worth loosing out on their offer, it just seemed to be below average account, at non-competitive prices. The person who served me, did seem to understand me and what I was after, but still she could have made more of a personal connection, which basically to me made me feel like the staff were simply average here. This bank looks a little old fashioned from the outside too, which makes it look closed from a distance, and in my opinion in such a busy place in a large town, they need to make their shop stand out, as competition is huge in an area like Manchester, and with it being near enough directly next to or opposite Halifax and Barclays, people are just going to go there, unless they make their bank look great, and stand out. As I said earlier, this isn't the nicest of banks but basically serves as a "local" bank for Santander customers, but I would recommend going elsewhere for your cash if you are with another bank, such as Halifax or Lloyds for example. UPDATE: Due to a recent issue with a cash machine outside, where i felt like my card could have been compromised due to the complicated nature of the cash machine, firstly having to select between languages which no other cash machine in Manchester I've seen offers, but then the cash machine was just poor, hard to use and after queuing up, I had to queue up elsewhere due to the complicated and "Dangerous" nature of the machine in general, I feel because of this the bank deserves a downgrade to a single one star and this had put me off becoming a member of Santander. UPDATE: A cool improvement with the indoor cash machines and the range of unique services it offers such as emailing receipts to Santander customers, I feel the need to upgrade this branch to a two-star rating, the staff seemed helpful enough but the service was still slow and the amount of cash machines inside the branch (3) really isn't good enough for a city center branch. read more