Tesco Online Banking Inaccessible

alanq

I am not sure how much it will damage Tesco's chances of bidding for other banking businesses as it has very deep pockets and the owners of the banks on offer will be mainly/only interested in achieving the highest prices. Recent events may however affect the willingness of many ex-Tesco customers to do business with the bank that is bought.

I think that it will (or at least should) put back for a considerable period Tesco's plans to offer current accounts later this year

Santander has a very poor level of customer satisfaction in part due to problems merging the banking services of the institutions that it has taken over. It still attracts new customers by offering sufficiently attractive terms. I suspect that after a short period Tesco too will be able to attract customers though probably not those who have had very bad experiences this week.

evenasus

robborollover wrote: »

Just tried to change to the new Tesco on line banking security , what a farce tried logging in with my existing security details, and get the message .....sorry theres a problem, we cant find your details it says try again which I have a dozen times. Yes Ive double checked I am putting it in correctly.

I got the same ...'sorry theres a problem, we cant find your details' message, when I tried to log in yesterday.

Silly me, I kept putting in 4 digits in the second box.
It took me a while to realise I should only input 2 digits in the second box.

Enter your date of birth (ddmmyy) followed by your unique number (up to 4 digits)

Might say up to 4 digits but I only required 2.

anniecave

I've just tried to log in to upgrade and I got the message:

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Register for online banking


Request your temporary PIN

In order to securely register you for online banking you’ll need to use a Temporary PIN. You can have it sent to you via mail. Once you have your Temporary PIN our online registration will only take a few minutes. Once you’re registered, you can check your balances, make payments and lots more.
Please call our online helpdesk team, you will find their number on our contact us page

---

If you get this message right now, it means the website is down.

I phoned them, and they wont give you a temporary PIN, they are just taking down details to call us all back when the website is back up.

So don't waste your time calling!

I suggested it might be a sensible idea for them to amend the message on the website to "please come back later". Surely that isn't that difficult to do? The guy I spoke to said they are working on getting the website back up and running though

Let's hope....

GeorgeHowell

alanq wrote: »

I am not sure how much it will damage Tesco's chances of bidding for other banking businesses as it has very deep pockets and the owners of the banks on offer will be mainly/only interested in achieving the highest prices. Recent events may however affect the willingness of many ex-Tesco customers to do business with the bank that is bought.

I think that it will (or at least should) put back for a considerable period Tesco's plans to offer current accounts later this year

Santander has a very poor level of customer satisfaction in part due to problems merging the banking services of the institutions that it has taken over. It still attracts new customers by offering sufficiently attractive terms. I suspect that after a short period Tesco too will be able to attract customers though probably not those who have had very bad experiences this week.

You could be right. But if people do not do their research and decide to use Tesco bank despite all this then on their own head be it.

Paul Lewis just gave the Benny Higgins (CEO of the bank) a fairly hard time on Radio 4. Frankly I didn't come away with the impression that they have a grip on it and know what they are doing in running their own bank on their own. Higgins seemed resigned to the fact that they are going to lose a lot of account holders. He wasn't asked about compensation, unfortunately, but another industry expert came on and said that in his view people should be compensated not only for monetary loss but for their time and trouble of having to hang on the phone for long periods.

On the basis that, as said above, Tesco has deep pockets they would be well advised to take heed of that. It would not induce me to go back (not at virtually any price) but some people with a more short-termist attitude might be impressed enough to keep their account there.

SnowMan

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

Paul Lewis just gave the Benny Higgins (CEO of the bank) a fairly hard time on Radio 4. .

You could sense Paul Lewis's exasperation at the responses he was getting. As usual Paul Lewis had researched the issue and challenged every incorrect statement made with clear facts that made Higgins look like a fool.

It was a miserable performance by Higgins and right from the top of the organisation it is clear they are in total denial.

Extraordinary that Higgins was claiming that the average waiting time on the phone both today and yesterday was about 15 minutes. That is so obviously not true. Paul Lewis had their around 1 hour wait times both today and yesterday to throw back at him but Higgins was in transmit mode rather than receive mode and just continued to spout further inaccuracies.

It also came across that the biggest anoyance to customers was Tesco not admitting to their problems, something they could do something about, but continue not to do so.

GeorgeHowell

SnowMan wrote: »

You could sense Paul Lewis's exasperation at the responses he was getting. As usual Paul Lewis had researched the issue and challenged every incorrect statement made with clear facts that made Higgins look like a fool.

It was a miserable performance by Higgins and right from the top of the organisation it is clear they are in total denial.

Extraordinary that Higgins was claiming that the average waiting time on the phone both today and yesterday was about 15 minutes. That is so obviously not true. Paul Lewis had their around 1 hour wait times both today and yesterday to throw back at him but Higgins was in transmit mode rather than receive mode and just continued to spout further inaccuracies.

It also came across that the biggest anoyance to customers was Tesco not admitting to their problems, something they could do something about, but continue not to do so.

It's the corporate mindset -- never admit to a mistake unless you are absolutely in a corner, and even then make sure that it's dressed up with positive spin. Perhaps a realistic assessment might be more along the lines that they have got themselves into a c!!k-up of epic proportions, they don't really know how it happened, they certainly don't know how to get out of it any time soon, they are fire-fighting like mad just to keep their heads above water, it is now clear that the team responsible for it did not know what they are doing, and still don't, and they haven't really any clear idea when they will be out of the wood, but they recognise they are going to have to fix it pdq whatever it takes ? Most of the people using this forum are relatively intelligent and might actually have more respect for something like that, but the sweaty masses out there are probably more likely to be taken in by the spin, if they are not actually affected themselves.

redape99

Managed to login this morning. Here's my experience in case others find it useful (message to Tesco's IT team - feel free to use any of this in your test plans)...

- I'm using a Windows 7 PC

- re-registered with Firefox and the process seemed to go fine (although I noticed that one of the steps towards the end didn't match the paper guide I'd been sent)

- because I have privacy settings after that initial login I was told it wasn't my regular computer and I needed an access code by text

- the mobile number I had recorded on my account was an Irish one and the migration had chopped off the last 2 digits

- on hold for an hour to get my account's mobile number changed

- logged in again with Internet Explorer 9 64-bit version on Windows 7

- clicked Send to get an access code but was redirected to the home page so nowhere to enter it

- tried to login again but got redirected to the "request a temporary pin" by mail page

- decided to ignore that message and restarted IE9 (64 bit), managed to get an access code by text this time and enter it, then entered my password on the next page

- then got a page saying I can't use Tesco Bank's website because I haven't got Adboe FlashPlayer 9 (I have 10 installed but it looks like you can't use the website with 64 bit Internet Explorer), would have been nice to be informed of that BEFORE trying to log in

- repeated the whole access code by text process again this time running Internet Explorer 32-bit with compatibility mode on and FINALLY successfully logged in


Most trouble I've ever had with any website and I have no confidence in it once logged in. I'm just expecting it to crash or dump you out to the home page at each click :undecided

alanq

The website now advertises 0800 numbers in place of the previous 0845 numbers and there is a Q&A section building up. Two good measures that should have been in place at the beginning of the week that could have reduced the grief.

I wonder to what extent the Tesco bosses are spinning and to what extent its staff are spinning to its bosses minimising the issues that remain. If your team wrote and implemented the system wouldn't you tell the bosses it was just a "significant minority" of customers who had been affected.

I am wondering if Tesco's "average waiting time" is the average time a customer stayed on the line waiting rather than the time taken to be actually connected to an agent. Clearly many people give up rather than stay on the line at length. As with all statistics one needs to know what exactly was being measured.

SnowMan

alanq wrote: »

I am wondering if Tesco's "average waiting time" is the average time a customer stayed on the line waiting rather than the time taken to be actually connected to an agent. Clearly many people give up rather than stay on the line at length. As with all statistics one needs to know what exactly was being measured.

The impression was clearly given that if you rang up you could expect to be answered in 15 minutes or so and when Paul Lewis said it was 54 minutes when he called, and was he exceptionally unlucky, there was no explanation from Higgins.

So it was either a wrong statistic or a deliberate abuse by Higgins of a statistic.

It was my immediate thought also that the actual statistic might include hang-ups (or calls to other departments?) but with the real wait being about 1 hour that would mean at least 3 out of 4 callers didn't get through at all which is pretty bad. It also suggests there are a lot of people with problems who Tesco don't know about because they haven't been able to get through.

alanq

Listen to today's Money Box on iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0122ll4/Money_Box_25_06_2011/

Tesco is the first topic and starts 0m 45s in.