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How to decide which bank to switch to?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I'm currently with Lloyds and am thinking of changing because I've had nothing but problems with requesting things from them. How did people decide what bank to go for? I've spoke to 3 different banks and have asked what they can offer me and information about switching. They've all said that for switching, I only need to do a few things and they'd do the rest.
All I need is a savings account / ISA and current account with debit card and internet banking - something most / all banks seem to offer now.
All I need is a savings account / ISA and current account with debit card and internet banking - something most / all banks seem to offer now.
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I dont know how much of that is down to individual branches though
The Cash ISA is only 0.5 %, so I'm thinking of moving that to a Credit Union.
They're very proud of having accessible online banking, but can't verify that it actually is.
If you have a local building society still running in your area, you can usually get good rates from them, and customer service tends to be better. Unfortunately all the building societies round here became banks, and then went bust.
The banks I use are Santander (ex Alliance & Leicester) and the Co-Op. Santander screw up all the time but their staff are brilliant, the Co-Op screw up pretty rarely but all their staff really are as thick as pigshit (they seem to think Little Britain was a training manual).
What is the difference between a bank & building society? We do have Skipton building society.
That's why so many of them de-mutualised in the 90s- the members had their share bought out, often for a few grand, and many people went for the windfall. The biggest buiilding society left is the Nationwide, which defends itself now by limiting membership and removing all rights to windfall payments to new members.
See this is the bizarre thing, I have been with Barclays all my life and have nothing but good things to say about them.....
whereas the company I work for banks with RBS and I have found them to be so useless I would never switch my personal accounts to them in a million years.
Everyone has different experiences, it basically comes down to luck whether you encounter good members of staff or thick ones!
How accessible are they? I also have an account with ING Direct and am having problems with the PIN they gave me.
According to my parents, I'm wasting my time thinking about changing - all banks will do what Lloyds have done. (In 6 years they've - "forgot" to send me a debit card, tell me how I apply to receive gross interest on savings, told me rubbish about my iSA statements and have twice managed to screw up a simple request for statements for each account I have with them for the last 4 weeks)
Choosing banks is quite tricky - especially when they all say they're the 'best'.
However, there is an amazing tool on the Money Supermarket's website which allows you to compare Current Accounts and Cash ISA's. You can use the links on the left hand side to compare the products by different criteria; for example 'regular savers' or 'overdrafts'.
I hope this helps.
I should say that right now, Barclays are being very good to me. But it took them a rather long time to start. They also told me different things in different branches. 'Yes, of course you can cancel your reserve!', 'No, we can't cancel that, whoever told you that is stupid'...etc.
They also forgot to tell me that they were going to start letting me take out money I didn't have, and that they were changing their policy on overdraft fees (twice!).
I just want to punch the lot of them in the face.
My experience has been that the branch staff in Santander are ok, but the call centre staff seem to have been poached from some kind of primordial swamp. I'm not sure some of them even know what money is.
The only bank I've had dealings with that is ok most of the time is Cahoot. The online-only thing can be a bit of a pain sometimes, but the fact that they actually seem to know what they're doing generally makes up for it.
Being internet only really puts me off. I'm with ING Direct as well as Llloyds; and have had nothing but problems accessing my account.
That's the same experience I've had with the Co-Op, as I mostly use telephone banking rather than visiting the branch. Some of the call centre staff are nice, some of them are obnoxious, but they're all uniformly thick.
When I've had to ring Santander they're staff have been better, but that might just be because the Alliance and Leicester call centre was abysmal so they're starting from a low base. However their main call centre in in Bradford, so you can draw your own conclusions...
From doing that you'll get a really good impression of what the local staff are like, and the ones that are helpful are probably the bank you want. If you mainly use telephone or internet banking then it's a different kettle of fish, but if you want branches, go and try them out.
I have started to do this. I've spoke to RBS, Barclays and HSBC. The staff I spoke to did seem to know what they were talking about. Although one wasn't 100% sure about accessibility and did have to phone someone for advice.
According to my parents, I'm better off staying with Lloyds and that all banks will do what they did. (wanted bank statements for my 3 accounts from the last 4 weeks - sent nothing for 2 and sent statements from July to January for the other. They also claimed that they can't sent statements out for ISAs)
Basically most banks are pretty rubbish, and you need to weigh up whether the effort of moving everything over, especially if you want to transfer ISAs will be worth it, bearing in mind none of them are perfect. You'd have to have a massive number of problems with Llyods before the effort of moving was worth it just for that sake.
If you get access to online banking, you can look up your statements and solve that problem.
worth a try maybe?
Smile is their internet only version. The normal co-op is fully internet enabled (and is actually the same web pages, just different colours and logos)
I know one person who has had trouble with the co-op, but I'm not prepared to lend them money so I can't blmae a bank for not doing so
The one concern I have about the co-op re sight, is they want you to use a chip'n'pin device for authorising bill payments if you do it on the internet - but you can always use the phone banking.
Britannia have something to do with the Co-Op, I think and the man I spoke to mentioned that can be an issue. However, I only have a phone bill (paid by d/d each month) to pay.
Has anyone had any experiences with Natwest, please?
Also I know exactly what those letters say and I am fairly certain that's a fuck up on their part, too. Hrrmph.
I used to have a credit card and bank account with them and they had a lovely habit of "losing" credit card bill payments just long enough to slap fees on, and then being twats when you asked for the fees back. They're thieves and I'd stick the entire board of directors in prison for 100 years for their thievery and twattishness.
I wouldn't touch them with yours.
As for the Co-Op bill payments, it depends on what you need to do. Some transactions don't require the use of the reader, especially low-value or regular transactions, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The reader has a pretty big display so you should be able to use it if you have sight, even if it is reduced sight.
Britannia were taken over/merged with Co-Op Financial Services about two years ago, so you don't always get the new customer benefits if you're an existing Britannia customer.