What on Earth is Happening at smile Bank?

DairyQueen

smile online and mobile banking have now been down for the best part of three days!

I haven't seen a single mention in the mainstream media and only discovered the issue when I attempted to logon today. A trawl through the web and there are plenty of irate people on social media.

I have an old smile current a/c which I use as the linked account for cash savings. Ignorant of the current technical problems, three days ago I arranged a large withdrawal from a savings account that will soon suffer an interest rate reduction. The funds should have hit the smile a/c today but I can't access the account to check and transfer on to the new savings a/c.

smile's interim solution to this technical disaster is to invite customers to use telephone banking (calls charged) and then waste their valuable time in what I imagine will be a very long call centre queue.

Thought I should at least flag the issue to warn other smile-schmuks. Needless to say, smile will soon be down another customer.

tehone

Its only been down sporadically, I've managed to login fine (via app) several times over the past few days (along with the odd error message). When I did call, it took no time at all for all the basic stuff (check balance etc), and to speak to someone took me 8 minutes.

The published phone number is an 03 number which unless you have a very weird contract is essentially the same as with any 01/02 number, so even on my mobile it comes out of the millions (or whatever) of inclusive minutes I have.

DairyQueen

I haven't been able to login online at all today. Take a look at fb and twitter. Hundreds of customers in meltdown. Your timing must have been good.

tehone

DairyQueen said:

I haven't been able to login online at all today. Take a look at fb and twitter. Hundreds of customers in meltdown. Your timing must have been good.

Yes, probably, I have a few checkpoints during an average, when I login into my banking apps (all of them regardless), and again with the phone queue, the announcement said a 10 minute wait, and I got through and finished the call by 8 minutes.

It is a little strange it hasn't made the mainstream news

funkycredit

I logged in ok this morning around 7.30 but can't now. Guess they're working on a fix!! 

SebH

The Co-op website is working fine for me this morning, I logged in to internet banking about 15 minutes ago without any problems. It seems to have been fixed!

DairyQueen

SebH said:

The Co-op website is working fine for me this morning, I logged in to internet banking about 15 minutes ago without any problems. It seems to have been fixed!

Co-op Bank appears unaffected. This issue is specific to smile. Go figure.

Arfa__

It's all very annoying. Only been able to login once via web app on Wednesday 8th morning, after phone app failed. Haven't been able to login since... Glad I managed to move the money I needed on Wednesday. But yes, why no news, nothing, we've only just been presented with some message on the login screens. Ironically, the last email I had from Smile was a big thank you from Andew Bester the CEO...

DairyQueen

Online banking still down and I don't use mobile banking. I was able to use telephone banking to check my balance (very lucky to have dredged the security number from the depths of memory). Large incoming transfer from savings has been credited.

So...

Attempted to use my debit card to transfer savings from linked smile a/c to my NS&I account. The first transaction (a £1000 test) was successful. Card then declined the first attempt at transferring the balance. Tried a lower (£10,000) transfer - also declined. I suspect that the amount has triggered some kind of security check. I can't find-out without phoning the ("we are experiencing high volumes of calls") call centre.
 *sigh.

I now have £44,000 trapped in a smile current a/c paying zero interest. OK, interest rates on cash are universally low but I'm losing £1.20 each day the money is trapped in that a/c.

I know how I would be feeling if I needed to pay a large bill, or complete on a house purchase, or any other time sensitive transaction.

Why is this issue suspiciously absent from mainstream media reports? If this was one of the big four the media would be all over it like a rash.

eskbanker

DairyQueen said:

Why is this issue suspiciously absent from mainstream media reports? If this was one of the big four the media would be all over it like a rash.

Surely you've answered your own question there, the mainstream media aren't interested because it's a tiny niche product of no interest to the majority of mainstream media consumers....

johnsmclean

It is a shame, I would imagine there has been a lot of cost cutting, used to be a great bank. I am keen to stay with them but this is another indication of how going downhill.