MSE News: The best and worst banks: First Direct tops the table and Barclays gets... 25 February 2015 at 2:13PM in Budgeting & bank accounts 36 replies 5.1K views

Former_MSE_Helen

More than 90% of First Direct's current account customers rate its service as 'great', compared to 39% at Barclays...

Read the full story:

The best and worst banks: First Direct tops the table and Barclays gets the wooden spoon




Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply. If you aren’t sure how it all works, read our New to Forum? Intro Guide.

baby_frogmella

Completely agree with First Direct offering the best CS. Its only after you'be been with other banks such as Clydesdale, Barclays, HSBC et al you realise how good FD are.

Before anyone says FD have paid MSE, these ratings are from the customers themselves.

Credit-Crunched

MSE Helen, please can you tell me if this article was proof read, prior to posting.

The syntax used is appalling, bordering on unreadable. I find myself manually adding punctuation marks to your sentences, rather than actually understanding the content.

It does nothing other than undermine, not only the website, but your credentials as a 'journalist'.

This may appear harsh, however, someone at MSE HQ needs to start to control content and quality.

Cyberman60

baby_frogmella wrote: »

Completely agree with First Direct offering the best CS. Its only after you'be been with other banks such as Clydesdale, Barclays, HSBC et al you realise how good FD are.

Before anyone says FD have paid MSE, these ratings are from the customers themselves.

Indeed, I've been with Midland/HSBC since age 13, and then them since they started up as a subsidiary of them and they've been brilliant. :T

meer53

Credit-Crunched wrote: »

MSE Helen, please can you tell me if this article was proof read, prior to posting.

The syntax used is appalling, bordering on unreadable. I find myself manually adding punctuation marks to your sentences, rather than actually understanding the content.

It does nothing other than undermine, not only the website, but your credentials as a 'journalist'.

This may appear harsh, however, someone at MSE HQ needs to start to control content and quality.

Completely irrelevant post. I had no trouble understanding the post.

Credit-Crunched

meer53 wrote: »

Completely irrelevant post. I had no trouble understanding the post.

Maybe I am just pedant.

Ah well, I'll move along!

colsten

baby_frogmella wrote: »

Before anyone says FD have paid MSE, these ratings are from the customers themselves.

FD do pay MSE a lot in referral money but you are right, this doesn't impact this survey. It's awfully easy though for the entire FD call centre to vote every time this survey comes out.

I have a couple gripes with this survey, none of which are to do with FD coming top:

1. what is "Customer Service"? There is no definition offered so anybody can make it whatever they like. Therefore the survey is largely meaningless
2. if there was a definition of Customer Service, I'd like to be able to report my experience with all banks, not be forced to pick one. The concept that people have just one bank account is getting more and more outdated

Pincher

More than 20 years with First Direct, no complaints, but then nobody has asked me my opinion for years! So where is this satisfaction score from?

colsten

It's one of the regular MSE surveys: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/poll/16-02-2015/how-do-you-rate-your-bank-accounts-service

baby_frogmella

colsten wrote: »

FD do pay MSE a lot in referral money but you are right, this doesn't impact this survey. It's awfully easy though for the entire FD call centre to vote every time this survey comes out.

I have a couple gripes with this survey, none of which are to do with FD coming top:

1. what is "Customer Service"? There is no definition offered so anybody can make it whatever they like. Therefore the survey is largely meaningless
2. if there was a definition of Customer Service, I'd like to be able to report my experience with all banks, not be forced to pick one. The concept that people have just one bank account is getting more and more outdated

'Customer service' IMHO means how well the bank resolves any issues...let's face it, no bank is perfect and all of them will make c0ck-ups at some point including FD. You only have to deal with Barclay's Delhi call centre or HSBC's Manila one to realise how good FD are. Or god help you if you ever have to deal with Clydesdale's poorly trained branch staff. FD don't offer something amazing, its just that they do what a bank is supposed to do and if/when things go wrong, they put things right very quickly.

~Brock~

Not sure if this goes against this MSE/First Direct 'love in', but as a Barclays customer of 26 years (the bottom ranked bank) I actually find their service absolutely first rate, and their internet and mobile banking facilities are phenomenally good.

Having said that, I've never been one for surveys - either participating in them or believing that their results mean anything.