Which bank would you recommend?

RG2015

This thread follows a conversation on another thread, which I believe merits a new thread.
I would probably recommend five or six different banks with each one being the best in one or more of the following.

1. Basic banking services
2. Online website, ease of use, extent of services
3. Banking app
4. Customer service, in branch, telephone including evenings and weekends, online help, 
5. Security measures
6. Savings rates
7. Rewards and other benefits
8. Value for money for packaged accounts
9. etc, I am sure there are many other banking services

I will give my thoughts but wanted to see what others thought first and also if anyone was even interested.

eskbanker

It always seems to me that most of these are so subjective that opinion-based comparison is largely futile, so I was heartened when objective metrics were introduced and data published regularly at https://www.fca.org.uk/data/fca-performance-scorecard-current-accounts and links from there, although they're not perfect either!

colsten

Any attempts, regardless of who makes them, at identifying a "best bank" or a "recommended bank" or a "best customer service" etc etc all have the same fundamental flaw: they assume that everybody has got the same requirements. It is pretty obvious that this isn't the case. 

RG2015

Here are my thoughts excluding any comments on customer service as I have always had good customer service.

HSBC, First Direct, TSB and Tesco websites and apps are not particularly easy to navigate and do not appear to have more than 3 months of transaction history

NatWest, Nationwide and Santander have more features and have extensive transaction history available online. NatWest has 7 years of transactions, Santander at least 4 and Nationwide just over 1 year.

I also like Nationwide allowing transactions on non business days and showing the weekend credit dates in the description when the transaction is posted on the Monday.

NatWest is particularly annoying when future scheduled payments disappear from the records at about 6:00 pm on the working day before the payment day.

tacpot12

I would recommend NatWest, and would not recommend Smile. The Smile App has given me problems over the last twelve months. Santander's Internet Banking is not secure enough for my liking. HSBC are ok. . 
I have Personal Current accounts with NatWest and Smile and Business Current Accounts with Santander and HSBC. 

NedS

I have banked with Barclays as my main account for over 30 years and have never been dissatisfied with the service I have received. I believe you only really find out how good they are when you have a problem, and we've only ever had one problem which Barclays bent over backward to help with so they have earned my loyalty.

More recently I also had an HSBC account for a while and found the customer experience in branch not a patch on Barclays. The Barclays cashiers always read my name off my card or documents and address me by name - it's the little things that make the difference. Recently switched the HSBC to Lloyds, who seem OK so far. There are no banks (branches) left in my local town so they all lose points there.

gsmh

I've recently switched to Triodos Bank and so far I'm impressed. I needed to call them about a faster payment I hadn't received and got straight through to a person who knew what he was talking about and could help. Nice to know that my money is going only to ethical businesses. Triodos doesn't support Apple Pay, but applying for a Curve card and adding your Triodos debit card effectively circumnavigates that issue. The current account costs £3 a month, but I am really not bothered about that. Logging on to online banking requires the use of a Digipass but the mobile app is accessible with Face ID or similar biometrics or a PIN.

JudgeDekker

I switched to M&S Bank last year because they offered a nice bonus to do so. I regret that now though: I used to access my online account using an android app, but they turned off my access to the app because I don't have a mobile phone number registered, which meant I could no longer access my account. Bit annoying. So I called them up to add my phone number, and they told me that having done so it takes a WEEK for the app to pick up the change. If they had said ten minutes I would thought it was a long time. So they have effectively denied me access to my account for an entire week. In what universe is that an OK thing to do?

RG2015

JudgeDekker said:

I switched to M&S Bank last year because they offered a nice bonus to do so. I regret that now though: I used to access my online account using an android app, but they turned off my access to the app because I don't have a mobile phone number registered, which meant I could no longer access my account. Bit annoying. So I called them up to add my phone number, and they told me that having done so it takes a WEEK for the app to pick up the change. If they had said ten minutes I would thought it was a long time. So they have effectively denied me access to my account for an entire week. In what universe is that an OK thing to do?

Banks have been bombarding me with messages all year to make sure they had my correct mobile number.

I am not sure that any bank would have been able to do this in 10 minutes at the moment. Having said that a week does sound a bit excessive.

dunstonh

I used to access my online account using an android app, but they turned off my access to the app because I don't have a mobile phone number registered, which meant I could no longer access my account.

M&S made changes to comply with the EU directive PSD2 that all banks are going to have to put in place.  Some are ahead of the game, others behind.    I have an M&S account and they gave lots of warnings that the changes were coming and to make sure your details were correct before they switched.

You are also incorrect about not being able to access your account.  You could still use all facilities (card, cheque etc) apart from online banking.

So I called them up to add my phone number, and they told me that having done so it takes a WEEK for the app to pick up the change. If they had said ten minutes I would thought it was a long time.

They probably had a lot of other people who also ignored the warnings about getting it in place before the changeover.

So they have effectively denied me access to my account for an entire week. In what universe is that an OK thing to do?

1 - Stop being such a drama queen.  You have only lost online access.  You have not been denied access to your money and your card etc still work fine.

2 - In future take notice of what the bank asks you to get in place before changes are to occur.

Effectively YOU have denied you access to your account for an entire week.

colsten

JudgeDekker said:

I switched to M&S Bank last year because they offered a nice bonus to do so. I regret that now though: I used to access my online account using an android app, but they turned off my access to the app because I don't have a mobile phone number registered, which meant I could no longer access my account. Bit annoying. So I called them up to add my phone number, and they told me that having done so it takes a WEEK for the app to pick up the change. If they had said ten minutes I would thought it was a long time. So they have effectively denied me access to my account for an entire week. In what universe is that an OK thing to do?

What stops you from switching away from M&S if you are so unhappy with them?