TESCO Bank CS - 5 stars

colsten

I had superb service from Tesco today. I wanted to make a faster payment of more than £10K from one of my TESCO savings accounts. Tesco online has a £10K limit. Not sure whether this is per transaction or per day but I wanted the money to be sent in one transaction, so I called them and asked whether they'd be able to send it for me. Answer was 'of course'.

The CS lady was almost upset when I asked whether I'd be charged for this (CHAPS etc) - she said of course I wouldn't. After the usual ID verification, I gave her the sort code and acct number and the money had arrived the other end before we ended the call. All done in less than 5 minutes from start to finish.

It's very rare that I need to ring them but every time I do, I get excellent service. I thought this was worth a mention, to make a change from the negative posts we usually have here.

Futuristic

Yes i'd agree customer service is second to none with Tesco

adindas

Same here ....

Dird

Their process for opening new accounts is a joke though...over 1 week waiting for a 2nd current account to be opened, sent a form to sign!

colsten

Dird wrote: »

Their process for opening new accounts is a joke though...over 1 week waiting for a 2nd current account to be opened, sent a form to sign!

That sounds unfortunate, and specific to personal circumstances. I have several Tesco current and savings accounts and can't recall that I was ever asked to send any forms. Once I had online access for my first current account, my subsequent applications (2nd current account, plus savings accounts) always were instant.

oldagetraveller

Dird wrote: »

Their process for opening new accounts is a joke though...over 1 week waiting for a 2nd current account to be opened, sent a form to sign!

Not my experience. I opened a second current account by 'phoning their, as already mentioned, excellent CS.
Just a bit of security then it was done and appeared, soon after, in my accounts list.
No forms to complete or send at all.:)

knack92

Terms and conditions say it's £10,000 per day (online and mobile) and to contact them for amounts above this. Good to hear it was a simple process.

Futuristic

Dird wrote: »

Their process for opening new accounts is a joke though...over 1 week waiting for a 2nd current account to be opened, sent a form to sign!

Never had issue with it, I have almost all services with Tesco Bank (CC, Loan, Bank & Savings) without any issues. Second account was opened and showing online within days for me.

callum9999

While I agree their customer service is good, it was no different to any other bank I've had to call (Natwest, Co-op, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, N&P, TSB). I'd expect any one of them to process a faster payment within 5 minutes - literally all they have to do is verify your identity then type in the payment details and hit send.

colsten

callum9999 wrote: »

While I agree their customer service is good, it was no different to any other bank I've had to call (Natwest, Co-op, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, N&P, TSB). I'd expect any one of them to process a faster payment within 5 minutes - literally all they have to do is verify your identity then type in the payment details and hit send.

I can't say I have much experience with the CS of those banks as apart from COOP and HSBC I had no reason to call them. The COOP call wasn't too bad though a tad unnecessary as they could have made registering for their rewards an online choice rather than asking customers to ring them. The HSBC call was to upgrade to Advance, and one of those calls where you can easily lose the will to live - ages to get to talk to someone, and then they interrogate you for almost an hour. I still did it as I wanted the 6% RS as well as the Save Together offer. I got accounts with all the others too but never had reason to call them.

Are you saying the listed banks all make larger payments for you without charging CHAPS fees? That would be good to know.

The banks/building societies I do have CS experience with are Santander (Select), Al Rayan, Punjab, SBI and Nationwide. I wouldn't rate any of their CS as highly as Tesco though some are ok:

• Santander (Select) and Al Rayan answer the phone quickly and usually can help with the query satisfactorily there and then
• Punjab and SBI seem to be very peculiar, quaint banks stuck in a last millenium time warp. I found them too cumbersome to deal with and cancelled my accounts with them.
• I love the Nationwide online service but getting hold of any CS person who has reliable information and is properly skilled about their products - particularly their ISAs - is a big hit and miss.

callum9999

colsten wrote: »

I can't say I have much experience with the CS of those banks as apart from COOP and HSBC I had no reason to call them. The COOP call wasn't too bad though a tad unnecessary as they could have made registering for their rewards an online choice rather than asking customers to ring them. The HSBC call was to upgrade to Advance, and one of those calls where you can easily lose the will to live - ages to get to talk to someone, and then they interrogate you for almost an hour. I still did it as I wanted the 6% RS as well as the Save Together offer. I got accounts with all the others too but never had reason to call them.

Are you saying the listed banks all make larger payments for you without charging CHAPS fees? That would be good to know.

The banks/building societies I do have CS experience with are Santander (Select), Al Rayan, Punjab, SBI and Nationwide. I wouldn't rate any of their CS as highly as Tesco though some are ok:

• Santander (Select) and Al Rayan answer the phone quickly and usually can help with the query satisfactorily there and then
• Punjab and SBI seem to be very peculiar, quaint banks stuck in a last millenium time warp. I found them too cumbersome to deal with and cancelled my accounts with them.
• I love the Nationwide online service but getting hold of any CS person who has reliable information and is properly skilled about their products - particularly their ISAs - is a big hit and miss.

That's why I never open/upgrade an account on the phone/in branch if I can help it! We have the idiots not reading what they're signing then blaming the bank for mis-selling to thank for that...

I can't recall getting particularly bad service from any bank call centres - except Santander during their Abbey takeover and infamous customer service failures. I particularly like Lloyds who are happy to throw compensation at me whenever they make a mistake.

I read the OP as saying they still sent a faster payment over the phone, not CHAPS. If it was CHAPS it's not inconceivable that a nice agent would waive Tesco's £25 charge, but the saying "of course it's free" doesn't really add up. I've never made such a large payment in one go so I don't know - though many of them have higher limits than £10,000. Lloyds and Halifax have £25,000 I believe.