Hi, has anyone else had recent dire experiences with AXA Banque/AXA Banque International? They make Crédit Agricole seem pretty good by comparison!
Hi there… quite possibly, what you call dire… may just be the norm…
what dire experiences have you had lately… ?? 
We’d had a few issues with Crédit Agricole so spoke to a seemingly nice knowledgeable lady at the France Show in London who was promoting AXA online banking. A catalogue of disasters later - non arrival of bank cards & PIN nos. to name but a few - and we gave her written confirmation of our wish to close the account. Only nothing was done and the account - which we’d never been able to access or use - started racking up interest which is where we still are, despite keeping a record of everything. Don’t touch them would be my advice.
Oh dear… and what issues did you have with CA ??
Not responding to emailed enquiries - they’re not hot on IT are they! - and duff information when they do. We’d overlooked a couple of largish direct debits a couple of Xmases ago - one à taxe hab. or foncière - all our fault, but we transferred the cash quickly and I checked with CA to see if the payments would be represented to the bank. Oh yes they said, don’t worry, happens all the time. Wrong!
Mmm… so… is the CA problem… that you were wrongly advised by them… and, in fact, the demands for payment (which had landed when there was insufficient funds in your account) … were not represented for payment ??.. if so, that seems a bit of a harsh judgement against them 
To clarify who can do what with SO & DDs,
- Standing Orders are an instruction to a bank to send money, the customer can control this with the bank
- Direct Debits are requests from a 3rd party to take sums from a bank account (subject to prior authorisations). Whilst a bank can give their view on whether the 3rd Party will try again, the bank has no control over the 3rd Party and cannot push the 3rd Party (they may in fact be unable to call 3rd Party and advise funds are available as this could contravene privacy/confidentiality obligations - and, even if funds were available there could be other DDs coming through the system that would consume the funds). In this case the customer has to arrange settlement of their account with the 3rd Party directly (even if this is through re-issuing of the Direct Debit).
Generally speaking, the 3rd Party will not keep trying to re-issue the DD every day on the chance of getting payment as this tends to result in
a) Penalty charges being levied against the account holder (further reducing the chance of funds being available)
b) increased banking and admin costs for the 3rd Party
Hope this helps
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Thanks Ray, useful to know for future reference.