Smile banking - terrible online service?!

iscrimger

It doesn't update your balance instantly unless you use an ATM as you have physically removed money from the account. With retailers they tend to authorize the transaction first then process the transaction later which may take a few days. You will not be able to spend the authorized amount. If you have £250 available in your account and buy a TV for £200 you will only be able to get authorization on anything else for the value of £50.

Oh my secure message doesn't always pulse when I have a message and I never get emails telling me I have secure messages. I logged in one week and out of curiosity checked my messages to discover I had 7 unread messages from them.

I am worried about smile, as I have asked in another thread - They have cancelled my overdraft and a letter I received the other day states they are not issueing me with a replacement credit card after the current one expires.

kangarolf

I'll chime in here with my grumpy old man speech.

The online offering from Smile is a joke;

1 - its non-standards compliant (might not matter to most people but as a web designer myself its important that sites are compliant so that people with alternative methods of rendering a site, screen readers for instance, get a consistent result). It uses little (rubbish) images for links instead of an actual anchor element, buttons are images and not browser implemented buttons for form submissions and so on and so on.

2 - it looks awful, whoever designed it should be shot. Whilst I accept they want to use their signature colour there are more subtle ways than using pink on white or white writing on a pink background..its virtually unreadable in parts, linked with the tiny default text size. Those nasty image links for the menu on the left hand side are laughable and look like a child created them...they shouldnt be images anyway but some sort of styled unordered list with hover over styles (see above)

3 - it lacks some of the most basic functions that you would expect and are not hard to implement.
- search transactions either within the narrative or by date
- rename a money transfer so the reference makes sense to the recipient. You cant even remove one for gods sake! So if I set up a transfer to a friend to pay for a holiday in 1999, the next time I want to pay them for something the reference will still say holiday 1999 and I cant change it!!! Why..!!! I cant delete it and recreate one with a decent narrative either so I have to create another one and pollute my screen with multiple payment setups to the same person! Its insane that they make you do this.

4 - If you pay a bill and select one of the pre-defined recipients (in my case good energy for my leccy bill) it doesnt tell you on the screen when you select it what bank account and sort code THEY think good energy is using. They recently changed and I have no idea if smile have changed the details...so I create it manually and so the whole pre-defined list becomes a waste of time.

5 - links that are not images are not highlighted in any way...so for instance you click on current account from the main home screen to view your account but it is not underlined nor does it give any indication its a hyperlink.

6 - if you click the back button on your browser it logs you out. At least try to deactivate it with javascript first and popup a warning. If the disable fails then log the person out. Annoying!

7 - No further details available for any of MY transactions. I cant click on a transaction and find out what time it was made or what the narrative was and so on.

8 - Did I mention that you cant even search or filter by date or narrative or type of transaction...I mean for gods sake, I have to trawl through every statement one by one manually looking for a transaction, way to really utilise the power of a database!

9 - If I get a new switch card the old one still appears in my list of cards to use with the little authorisation reader...at one point I had 4 cards up there only one of which was active...I had to contact customer support to get them removed...why the hell are they not removed anyways....??

I like banking with Smile, I like knowing my money is used wisely in ethical investments, I like their customer support and they are pretty quick in fixing things, BUT this web application is like a dinosaur I dont know who is responsible for it but I would be ashamed if I wrote it.

savagej

I had the card problem myself, they dont cancel cards unless they are replacing lost or stolen ones. So they dont drop off until they expire. I was using an old card for over a year as it was already registered with another bank and I still recalled the 3 digit security code and it seemed easier than updating the record. I did, however, also in the end call up and get them to cancel the cards as I had an old Electron card and a Visa Debit card on the same account and did not want to find they had sent out a replacement Electron card on its expiry only for it to get lost in the mail and the first I become aware of it is when someone has spent something using it.

The issue with the not providing the available balance is a strange one to me, as the site is frequently (the Co-op one) closed for maintaince during the night at weekends. I also have a credit card and the available credit drops immediately I use the card, but the two balances on the current account stay the same, so one of their coders does know that ledger balance - (authorisation amount 1 + authorisation amount 2 +..... authorisation amount n) = available balance. It would take less than 5 minutes to put this line in the code.

Lansdowne

Also they haven't updated their menu of utility companies, council tax departments etc for years and years. Goodness knows whether payments reach the recipient if someone chooses a supplier who has changed their bank account since 2003 or whenever.

rosmersholm

I do have a lot of respect for smile and have a nice package account / savs & loan and love their ethical policies (despite being very late in backing down from #notw advertising!) - BUT I have to agree that its now 2011 and their online banking is still as shoddy as ever. Some of the bigger banks now have so many bells and whistles that smile & co-op are just too antiquated. All the promises of change have never happened and the rates certainly aren't keeping me there...

Mikhail

I don’t like Smile Bank and Co-op because:

1. I don’t like people who say that this bank is the best without being able to explain why.

2. I don’t like hearing that they have an excellent customer service to speak with because if you need to speak with them you have a problem that you cannot solve, the more times you need to call customer services than worse the bank services are.

3. 0.12% AER i.e., you need to have at least 100k to get £10 per month, e.g. in Lloyds 5k

4. ISAs interest are crap

5. Foreign transaction fee 2.75%; ATM 2% or £2, therefore withdrawing £50 abroad (in a local currency) will cost you 6.75% or £3.38; £100 abroad will cost you £4.75 or 4.75%; £500 will cost you £23.75 or 4.75%. Smile and Co-op DOES NOT have upper limit for cash withdrawal fee so you will continue paying an extra 2% (+ 2.75% foreign exchange) for cash withdrawals. Some other banks or credit cards charge nothing. Withdrawing cash from any credit card abroad will be cheaper than using the above two banks.

6. SSL certificate that Smile uses is not extended; secure but cheap, there is no mobile banking or APP; poor internet banking interface, really basic banking features without live updates and no limits on failed logins, at least I haven’t noticed.

7. Even the Verified by Visa (VbV) scheme is not fully functional.

8. Introducing card reader will be expensive, and very inconvenient, i.e., changing batteries, taking it to holidays, replacing it if broken, etc., and not having it = no access to the internet banking. There are cheaper and better solutions than this, e.g., extended PIN via text message, if money movements’ transaction involved, as the most people only login to check their balance/transactions, so why just not let them do it with a customisable username and password that they can remember, as the most secure password and username is not the one you keep written down, but the one you could remember.

Well, what can I say, if you like Smile use it, I most definitely will not, however, I believe some people will like it, finally there are people who are enjoying sadomasochistic orgies in Nazi uniform. In addition, I think previously Smile was ‘smiling’ to its customers, but now it is definitely ‘laughing’ on them. Good luck!

hate-banks

One thing is wrong though, you say "no card reader = no internet banking"! You don't need the card reader to login. if you don't have your card reader with you, you can still call if you need to make a bank transfer.
This is better than Barclays, at Barclays you need the card reader just to login, which is stupid!

steven_cardwell

hate-banks wrote: »

One thing is wrong though, you say "no card reader = no internet banking"! You don't need the card reader to login. if you don't have your card reader with you, you can still call if you need to make a bank transfer.
This is better than Barclays, at Barclays you need the card reader just to login, which is stupid!

I actually found this thread, from searching for "why does nationwide transfers not appear in account you sent it to straight away".

I do have a Smile account, and the first thing i did notice was my old bank HBOS showed 2 balances, the bank balance and the true balance, i do use Microsoft Money now and manually input my transactions myself, so i don't rely on what Smile tells me.

Talking though of card readers, my other half uses Nationwide as her main bank (we have tried to get her a Smile, but as she was had money issues a few years ago, they won't even add her to my savings account that is only a ATM card), and this asks for a card reader to log in (currently still lets you log in the old way as well), but the most annoying thing is every single bank transer needs to use this reader.

On my Smile account, "everyday" money transfers, i don't need to use the card reader, so its pretty easy to log in and do your banking business, and if i am away from home, i can telephone them, use my online log ins and transfer money that way without any problems.

My other half is currently at her parents, Friday is her payday, and usually she would transfer me money, as it is my Smile current account that bills are all paid out of, we are also on a budget that this money can't be late in being transfered, anyway, she thought all that she would need to do is phone Nationwide and transfer the money using telephone banking.

It would seem from phoning the auto system, that the online logins don't work on the phone, after phoning enquiries, she is told the same thing, and that signing up for phone banking would take a few weeks to sort out, which is no good for when you want the money transfered straight away, the other "helpful" advice she was given was to find a Nationwide branch to to the transfer in.

Outcome was she had to travel 7 miles to nearest branch to do what i think, should have been a simple task, if Nationwide had been more like Smile and dropped the card reader for smaller transactions, then i could have done it here, as i know my partners details, but without her bank card, then that was then out the question.

The other thing i have noticed as well, if i transfer money to her, it appears in her Nationwide as quick as it takes me to log in to her account, but vice versa, it can take anything up to an hour to appear when she transfers me money, so i am assuming it is the Nationwide holding onto the money for a bit longer?

When i look at the 2 banks side by side, i would say, that Smile just works, whilst Nationwide seems to go out their way, to be as awkward as possible.

hate-banks

why didn't you go to a Cooperative Bank branch instead of going to a Nationwide one?? I've had people put money on my SMile account using cash from a Cooperative Bank Branch and it was on my account instantly. THey just needed my name, sort code and account number.

You could also ask for a second card reader from nationwide and leave it in your car or wherever. I have 2 smile card readers, one at home and one at work. Just in case.
You can use any card reader with any bank apparently. For instance, I can use my Barclays card reader with my Smile Debit Card to make transfer from my Smile account! Weird but it works also with the RBS card reader.

About the time it takes to transfer money from Smile, I would say it is Nationwide that's slow yes. I transfer money from Smile to RBS and Barclays current accounts and I can see the money instantly (litteraly instantly, takes like 10 seconds). The same from Barclays or RBS to Smile.

One day I sold something to someone and the buyer was banking at Nationwide. He told me when you make a money transfer for the first time to someone, it takes 3-4 days, they doesn't use CHAPS! Pfff... This bank seems to suck a little bit regarding transfers....

steven_cardwell

hate-banks wrote: »

why didn't you go to a Cooperative Bank branch instead of going to a Nationwide one?? I've had people put money on my SMile account using cash from a Cooperative Bank Branch and it was on my account instantly. THey just needed my name, sort code and account number.

You could also ask for a second card reader from nationwide and leave it in your car or wherever. I have 2 smile card readers, one at home and one at work. Just in case.
You can use any card reader with any bank apparently. For instance, I can use my Barclays card reader with my Smile Debit Card to make transfer from my Smile account! Weird but it works also with the RBS card reader.

About the time it takes to transfer money from Smile, I would say it is Nationwide that's slow yes. I transfer money from Smile to RBS and Barclays current accounts and I can see the money instantly (litteraly instantly, takes like 10 seconds). The same from Barclays or RBS to Smile.

One day I sold something to someone and the buyer was banking at Nationwide. He told me when you make a money transfer for the first time to someone, it takes 3-4 days, they doesn't use CHAPS! Pfff... This bank seems to suck a little bit regarding transfers....

Thing is not much use having the card reader if you don't have the persons card, and here, at least i can't think of one place that have a Coop bank branch, other halfs parents don't have the internet, so all she thought was a quick phone call and money would be transfered, i can log into her online nationwide account, but to transfer money with them needs the card and the card reader, with the post office you need the card to put money into a smile account, so the only option that was left to her, was find a nationwide branch and do her transaction.

EDIT, just checked nearest branch from me is Glasgow, not much use when i am in St Andrews, and other half is in Ayr currently.