Which? - The 10 worst banks for customer service - and the 10 best

realaledrinker

From today's Times:

Best buy tables tell you which banks will give you the highest returns on your money, but don't reveal anything about great service. If you are fed up to the back teeth of being treated badly by your bank take heed of the findings of a recent Which? survey.

The consumer organisation surveyed 15,000 Which? members over the last year and ranked their opinions of financial providers.

Each bank's overall score is an average of individual marks given by members based on their experiences of customer service, how well they were kept informed about the availability of better deals, the accuracy of their statements and the quality of the products offered to them.

The average scored across the industry was 63 per cent.


RankBank/Building Society
Worst
1 Abbey
2 Barclays
3 Halifax
4 Cheltenham & Gloucester
5 Northern Rock
6 Alliance & Leicester
7 Bank of Scotland
8 Lloyds
9 HSBC
10 NatWest

Best
1 Smile
2 First Direct
3 Co-operative Bank
4 Nationwide Building Society
5 Yorkshire Building Society
6 Intelligent Finance
7 Sainsbury's Bank
8 Britannia Building Society
9 Coventry Building Society
10 Royal Bank of Scotland

simon_templar_2

The best are all small players, interesting the big boys getting the thumbs down!

Lokolo

Isn't that the same in any industry?

rb10

One reason for the best being the smaller banks and the worst being the largest is that more people will have current accounts with the likes of Natwest, Lloyds, HBOS, Barclays & HSBC than with Sainsbury's Bank and the building societies.

People who, through no fault of the bank, get bank charges, will often blame the bank for this, hence giving them a lower rating in a survey like this.

Whereas the smaller institutions, used largely for savings, have fewer issues like this that can tarnish the relationship between the bank and the customer.

I don't like league tables based on surveys because there are so many ways in which you cannot compare them.

malcolmcoles

rb10 wrote: »

One reason for the best being the smaller banks and the worst being the largest is that more people will have current accounts with the likes of Natwest, Lloyds, HBOS, Barclays & HSBC than with Sainsbury's Bank and the building societies.

People who, through no fault of the bank, get bank charges, will often blame the bank for this, hence giving them a lower rating in a survey like this.

Whereas the smaller institutions, used largely for savings, have fewer issues like this that can tarnish the relationship between the bank and the customer.

I don't like league tables based on surveys because there are so many ways in which you cannot compare them.

That Which? survey used to find the same sort of thing when it was only of current accounts:
Overall customer satisfaction scores for the ‘big four’ banks were: Barclays 53 per cent, HSBC 57 per cent, Lloyds TSB 59 per cent, NatWest 58 per cent. All four of these banks offer 0.1 per cent credit interest on most accounts. Smile got the highest customer satisfaction score in the survey (88 per cent). Second place in the Best Buy table went to Cahoot (82 per cent).

Obukit

Just switched from A&L to Smile tonight as a direct result of this - fed up with A&Ls useless Internet Banking and apathetic staff.

To be fair I also have an account with HSBC and I've found them to be generally very good - excellent branch coverage and helpful.

Ken68

Went into A and L local office yesterday.Like a prison.
Smallest service hatch you ever saw, not much bigger than an A4 sheet, flanked by an ever so large ATM and on the other side a freephone with no restpad .
The future I think.
Then went to Nationwide, three serving, smiles, the whole ambience was calm cool and collected.

savagej

rb10 wrote: »

One reason for the best being the smaller banks and the worst being the largest is that more people will have current accounts with the likes of Natwest, Lloyds, HBOS, Barclays & HSBC than with Sainsbury's Bank and the building societies.

People who, through no fault of the bank, get bank charges, will often blame the bank for this, hence giving them a lower rating in a survey like this.

Whereas the smaller institutions, used largely for savings, have fewer issues like this that can tarnish the relationship between the bank and the customer.

I don't like league tables based on surveys because there are so many ways in which you cannot compare them.

the values should be corrected statistically to take out the bias that you mention, it is not a difficult calculation.

neilp

This is all very subjective - I suspect individual experiences will vary greatly. For example, I have had a very negative experience with Nationwide and indifferent experience with Smile, while I am currently with A&L, who I have found to be excellent, and was with Barclays for over 15 years, and - with a few exceptions - had a positive experience with them.

I am not saying these surveys completely lack validity or usefulness, just that they do not always reflect customers' individual experiences.

apt

I don't think the survey is that sound or significant. As well as the problems about method and sampling the differences between the bottom of the 'best' 'worst' tables aren't even statistically significant. It does demonstrate that Smile and First Direct have good reputations and Abbey is unpopular with its customers, but this is widely known anyway. Also it appears to indicate that even Which subscribers don't really back the pumped-up accolades the magazine gave to Cahoot a few months ago. You're best relying on your own experiences.

Nichelette

Give my experience of Abbey customer services I'm not surprised they have come out worst (and no, I've never had a bank charge in my life), conversly I've been very happy with Natwest.