Desperately seeking bank with good customer service

Rob5342

MikeJXE said:

I can't remember last time I needed to speak to a bank, 20 years or moe. A different matter if you're in business, either way if I need customer service often I would choose a bank with a local branch 

I think I've spoken to a bank once in 20 years, that was Halifax when I couldn't register my card with Google pay. Personally Id choose a bank withoit branches as they tend to be properly set up to do things remotely. Halifax wanted us to go.to a branch just to open a joint account, that's ridiculous in this day and she so we opened one with Monzo in about 10 minutes.

boingy

Rob5342 said:

I think I've spoken to a bank once in 20 years, 

That was pretty much me until this year when suddenly every transfer of funds between accounts runs the risk of being blocked, requiring you to talk to someone on the phone to persuade them that you are the same person you have always been. One hour and six minutes waiting on hold for the Co-op. I'm still scowling at the thought of it.

jbrassy

I would also recommend First Direct. Never had issues getting through to them on the phone on the odd occasion when I've needed to speak to them. I would also recommend Starling, although I've never spoke to them on the phone. The Starling app is very slick though.

robatwork

Futuristic said:

Nearly all the banks incl all the high street ones have competent live chat where you can just leave a message and they reply back within 1-2 days. 

They really don't.

robatwork

I'm another in the "haven't spoken to in 20 years but needed to recently" camp.

My experience with live chat in the last 6 weeks (as there is no option to email or secure message any longer) was as follows:
Barclays - awful
Lloyds - horrifically awful. This led to me asking to be transferred to someone who was in a position to help me or at least understand my questions and not give me non sequiturs as replies. The reply was again irrelevant and unhelpful, and I cut my losses, and ties to Lloyds after many years. 

My point being the big banks all seem very similar in having offshore call centres, and I too have found the disconnect in comprehension getting larger. 

First direct are good on the phone but didn't (last I checked) have a decent online/email way of contacting. I do like to have a written record of conversations with my banks.

p00hsticks

MikeJXE said:

I can't remember last time I needed to speak to a bank, 20 years or moe. 

Me neither - I suspect you usually only tend to find out what a banks customer service is like if and when you experience an issue with their financial service.....

MikeJXE

p00hsticks said:

MikeJXE said:

I can't remember last time I needed to speak to a bank, 20 years or moe. 

Me neither - I suspect you usually only tend to find out what a banks customer service is like if and when you experience an issue with their financial service.....

Everyone is different and to someone somewhere they won't be happy with X bank

I've been with Santander who some think are dreadful. Personally I have never had a problem with them.

I have transferred funds between family, funds to savings accounts

Over the last 6 months I have earned £1,600 by bank switching, opened 10 other accounts, moved money into Santander moved money out

Except for some being slower than others I have not had a single problem except for Virgin Money who allowed my to enter all my information into their application process then I never had a single word from them. If thats how they want to be fair enough, plenty more fish in the sea. 

Nebulous2

I have very little recollection of needing to talk to banks. The last time was Chase, who blocked a money transfer and wanted to speak to me.

I've moved my last two insurance policy renewals to a broker, and couldn't believe how refreshing it was to talk to a person who answered the phone, took details, quoted and signed me up, rather than having to work through a menu.  

However - you see how the press tell us AI is going to take all our jobs, rule the world and dominate us all? 

Do you think these chatbots are up to that? 

Coolgirl

robatwork said:

I'm another in the "haven't spoken to in 20 years but needed to recently" camp.

My experience with live chat in the last 6 weeks (as there is no option to email or secure message any longer) was as follows:
Barclays - awful
Lloyds - horrifically awful. This led to me asking to be transferred to someone who was in a position to help me or at least understand my questions and not give me non sequiturs as replies. The reply was again irrelevant and unhelpful, and I cut my losses, and ties to Lloyds after many years. 

My point being the big banks all seem very similar in having offshore call centres, and I too have found the disconnect in comprehension getting larger. 

First direct are good on the phone but didn't (last I checked) have a decent online/email way of contacting. I do like to have a written record of conversations with my banks.

Well, this is the problem. I don’t contact them too much either, but I suspect they encounter so little problems due to technology allowing customers to do simple things by themselves that they no longer know how to help when things go wrong. 

In this case, it was actually tech that failed. I was paying a credit card bill online. Got an error message. Neither my current account nor my credit card showed any signs the credit card bill had been paid. So, about half an hour later, I did it again.

Later, I saw several of those payments show as ‘pending’ on my current account. Called customer service for my credit card. They told me to ask my bank to cancel the excess transactions. Bank only did this after several calls, chats, etc. but the next day… ALL the payments went through, resulting in my credit card actually having a positive balance on it.

Both the bank issuing the credit card and the bank providing my current account don’t seem to be able to fix this at all. Having a call centre in India doesn’t help, which is filled with people so used to reading off a call centre manual to provide customer service that they’re absolutely void of true problem-solving skills.

This all happened on Monday. And it’s still not fixed. Any ‘fixing’ appears to make the situation even worse. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Coolgirl

Futuristic said:

Nearly all the banks incl all the high street ones have competent live chat where you can just leave a message and they reply back within 1-2 days. 

Depends what you define as ‘competent’. They were definitely not competent by any stretch of the imagination unless the problem they are dealing with is by-the-book.

But for anything by-the-book… I would sort it out myself and not call them.