Co-op bank?

Cliecost

Hi,

I'm with FD at the moment. They're good. I have no issues with them but co-op bank's offer recently (£150 ect...) has caught my eye.

Someone I work with said she wouldn't touch them with a barge poll and I know they've had troubles in the past but I wouldn't be using it for savings, just as a current account.

Would it be daft for me to switch?

beefturnmail

I switched a dummy account purely to get the £150. Although the switch went smoothly, my experience of using their online banking, is that it is very clunky and not intuitive, so I wouldn't want to have my 'real' bank account with them

TomJ

Their internet banking service really is, as per the last poster's comment, clunky and rubbish. However, I put up with it for the £150 switching bonus and 4 quid a month.

Stuart_W

The internet banking has had a total refresh and provided you are put on the new system where you login with username and password it is much more up to date, looks totally different and has much of what you would expect that was missing on the old system
I've used Co-op internet banking since they launched it in 1999 and it is only very recently that it changed!

upoiupou

I'm with Smile, which is another branch of the Co-op. I can't comment on the Co-op's internet banking because Smile is on a different system (and is great) but in terms of "trouble in the past" this potentially affected my Smile account as much as any other Co-op bank account. I had a current account all through the trouble and my money is all still there. I didn't worry about it because the amount was well within the FSA guarantee amount.

Why wouldn't your colleague touch them with a barge pole - specifically? What is the risk?

suzeesu2000

Been with Coop for over ten years and have never had any issues with them, they have always been very fair with me. The only gripe i have is their internet banking site which is simply AWFUL! Whoever thought this was a good move needs their medication upping. Its very awkward and "clunky" is exactly the right word.

stylus360

I'm looking to switch to them from Santander123 to get the £150, i notice you can easily get the £4 month BUT to get the extra £1.50 (5p per transaction on the debit card), you would need to make 30 transactions.

So could you just pay for EACH item at checkout when doing a shop individually when at checkout...lol

That's my plan, then i will switch back to paying for everying with my Nationwide select 0.5% cashback card.

Cheers

pafpcg

I've had a Coop Bank current account for almost ten years and it's been reliable with no major problems that I can recall. But I don't use the Coop account for day-to-day purposes because I find there are two significant difficulties:

1. Faster Payments in and out are slow (like Tesco but not near-instantaneous like most other banks). Payments in take several minutes before the accounts are credited; payments out are quicker, usually at least 30s up to a minute or so.

2. Transactions on the online system and printed statements are NOT displayed in sequential order of processing. (Unless there's a setting that I'm unaware of, and I have looked.) Coop display all debit transactions for each day before all credit transactions. So the balance appears to go negative even though it's always been in credit - it makes tracking the flow of funds through the account unnecessarily more difficult. What's truly amazing is that it seems that Coop can end an account statement period after an arbitary number of transactions and this can result in a statement displaying a negative balance (because the debits have been processed first) and then that day's credits don't appear until the following month's statement!

The new online system is "different" but doesn't bother me greatly. The only issue I've experienced is that occasionally a debit transaction will appear twice on the list of recent transactions but the balance is correct: it always displays correctly after a sign-out/sign-in.

Maybe I'm being over-sensitive, and maybe I misunderstand how it works, but I just couldn't live with it for one of my primary accounts.

badger09

I've had my main:p current account with Co-op for over 40 years.

I've never had any problem which has made me want to switch away.

When I've needed to use it (rarely), telephone customer service has been excellent.

The online system is, IMHO, easier and less 'clunky' than FD's.

The app does what I want it to.

I'm operating 20+ current accounts at the moment, and have switched several over the last couple of years - so I'm not one who stays with 1 bank for life because they can't be bothered/don't want to play the game etc;)

dggar

pafpcg wrote: »

.....
2. Transactions on the online system and printed statements are NOT displayed in sequential order of processing. (Unless there's a setting that I'm unaware of, and I have looked.) Coop display all debit transactions for each day before all credit transactions. So the balance appears to go negative even though it's always been in credit - it makes tracking the flow of funds through the account unnecessarily more difficult. What's truly amazing is that it seems that Coop can end an account statement period after an arbitary number of transactions and this can result in a statement displaying a negative balance (because the debits have been processed first) and then that day's credits don't appear until the following month's statement! .......


Maybe I'm being over-sensitive, and maybe I misunderstand how it works, but I just couldn't live with it for one of my primary accounts.

There isn't a setting that you are missing.


I wrote to the chief executive and chief financial officer about these very issues, about six months ago. (Actually 11 months ago)


as to be expected the complaint was passed to someone lower down the food chain. their line was that they hope to rectify this sort of thing sometime in the future.


Perhaps a complaint from yourself might remind them that the issues are still there.


Here is the text of what I sent:--


5th September 2015

Niall Booker
Chief Executive Officer



The Co-operative Bank p.l.c.,


P.O. Box 101,
1 Balloon Street,
Manchester,
M60 4EP





Dear Mr. Booker,


I have been a customer of the Co-op Bank for X years.

Today I received a statement for my Current Account Plus and

I wish to complain most strongly about the presentation of my financial position on this statement


If I were asked to show this statement in order to demonstrate my credit worthiness to another financial institution it would give a totally false picture of my true financial position.

The statement closing balance shows as an overdraft of £6420.74 for the date
1st. September 2015.

On 1st. September 2015 my account was not overdrawn.

A copy of the statement is enclosed.

The Co-op bank appears to have a policy regarding statements of:

1.Printing and sending out statements when a defined number of transactions have taken place.


2.Only printing one sheet, even if this does not show all of the transactions that have taken place on a specific date. (All the other financial institutions I deal with would print a continuation page in this situation)


3.Grouping transactions on a specific date by Money Out and then Money In rather than grouping by Time of Transaction on a specific date.




I am appalled by this shoddy practice which allows the Co-op Bank to produce misleading and untrustworthy information. I blame the senior management of the Co-op Bank for allowing this situation to exist and expect it to be rectified with immediate effect.



Yours sincerely



cc Steve Friedlos Chief Information Officer

Cliecost

I think FD's online system is old fashioned and clunky. Is it worse than that? (if you know)