Tandem - One year On

ABRDF

I wrote about Tandem on year a go after two months of use. I feel that I know can give a much better review having been a customer for 13 months.


Good but could be great, some way to go

My married partner and I have been account holders with Tandem since the 5th of February 2018, we were seen as trialling the product and app, it was often said in the first few months that the app was only a beta test product. So our review is based on over one years experience using the card on a regular basis in the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia. Tandem have helped us spend over £23000 pounds between our accounts.

The Product.
The Tandem cards that we have are the cash back cards (0.5%) with a competitive apr (although we have never paid interest) and no foreign transaction fees. We first saw the cards mentioned by Money Saving Expert, this team and its mouth piece have often recommended the card on its web site and various national TV programs.
The application process was easy and the cards arrived quickly. The cash back is calculated monthly on the statement date and applied to the account thus reducing the outstanding balance.
We are some of the lucky ones, and have additional card holders ie each other on the account, this functionality appeared for a few weeks and I believe will return later this year.
The credit limit is very conservative ie 4K and 5k compared to 10k on our Halifax Clarity Cards. This does cause problems when booking holidays or making big purchases and, although we were told that an increase would come at the one year anniversary, this functionality is not yet available.

The App.

We have only used the iOS app and cannot comment on the Android version.
The app is much improved over the year although it is very cluttered, it took six months to get the notification functions working, including sounds, but in general it is stable and does not fall over.
* The account aggregation on Tandem does not work well for us no matter who the provider is First Direct has never worked, Halifax is very buggy and Starling isn’t available
* The balance between statements is not always correct, compared to the actual spend and pending transactions, but is correct at statement time. When you call Tandem the correct balance is shown on their system
* The pending transactions do not necessarily update overnight and can update at any during the day, this is unlike any other credit card provider
* Foreign pending / hold transactions can take up to 30 days to clear ie hotel holds etc. This can freeze available credit for long periods of time
* The app shows when and how the statement amount and bill will be taken
* You can freeze the card in the app, but this freezes the account in total and not individual cards; there is no functionality to freeze individual cards
* When making an internet purchase an sms code is sent to the account owner even if the secondary card holder / number is making the transaction; a second phone number should be linked to the additional card like First Direct or Halifax
* You can download a statement from the app via pdf, but you still get a paper statement as well
* You get sound and visual notifications for transactions in real time but only to the account owner’s phone not to the person making the transaction ie the secondary card holder

Customer Service
This is the biggest issue with Tandem. Initially the customer service offering was very limited in hours; this has improved now. There is a 24 hr fraud, lost or stolen help line.
The in-house customer service is getting better but can be very variable; at one stage we were on first name terms with the team because of the many problems. The outsourced customer services which I believe is based in Milton Keynes is a nightmare to deal with, they really don’t know the product and appear to be reading from scripts and they don’t listen; this really needs serious improvement and bringing back in house.
The chat facility via the app could be really great if they followed the Starling Bank or Monzo model; however, currently the chat is really a messaging service and it can take them sometimes 5 days to answer a question
Telephone Call wait times can be long, both to the in-house team and the outsourced team.
Twitter is not a good way to contact them either
One final point here, is that in particular the outsourced customer service team seem to insist that my married partner is female and always says wife, when I’m sure they can see the name of the additional holder is a man.

Summary:
Tandem Bank and the cash back card in particular have come a long way in a year, the product and app are appealing for customers who want to track their spending in real time and have monthly cash back free from foreign transaction charges. However, what lets them down is the app: it is not very robust and often does not display the correct information regarding balances; a basic in banking! The app is very cluttered and it’s not clear whether it’s a resource for Tandem accounts or an aggregator of bank accounts. Customer services, whilst opening longer now, still can be hit or miss with long telephone waits and the outsourced customer contact centre is appalling! In the 21st century the in-app chat should be that, and not a messaging service. Finally Tandem’s flamboyant CEO needs to take a tip from the CEO of Starling Bank who answers criticism directly on Twitter rather than just blocking customers such as us!
GOOD BUT COULD BE GREAT