Switch to coop or smile; they have either 24 hour banking over the phone from Skelmersdale or Smile which is completley online, you set up your standing orders yourself, even foreign transfers involve writing a sort of secure email with all the details in, you get an email back confirming it happened followed by a letter in the post. Whenever I've spoken to anyone, they have a delightful northern/scouse accent and I've never got frustrated by unhelpfulness or fecklessness, they all have their fecks fully trained there.
Smile do have a line to skelmersdale but mostly you can do everything online. I manage 6 different accounts including ISA's, joint accounts and savings accounts all from one login and you can transfer instantly between them or other Smile/coop users. I've never heard a bad word about either smile or coop and they practice ethical trading so your money isn't being invested in child slavery or Nestle. You get more interest than most of the other banks, and they offer a range of accounts with at least the same sort of perks as Abbey. You can pay money in at any post office - your nearest coop in london would be...Angel tube.
Here endeth the sermon.