Raisin awful onboarding/admin vs. Hargreaves Lansdown

failed_dj

Hiya,

I'm a long-time user of MSE, but never signed up for forums before; signed up just now so that I can raise this question.

Basically, for the last 3 weeks I've been trying to set up a Raisin account (mostly to take advantage of a £50 cashback which has now expired). At the same time, I was also looking at HL as they had certain investments which were rather attractive.

HL took 1.5 hours from start to finish - literally, apply -> acknowledge -> onboarded -> invested.

Raisin took 3 days to respond to the application. I received an email asking for copies of bank statement and passport to be sent to some 3rd party website, but without any indication that the email was actually from Raisin - no mention of application number ... etc. 

I called Raisin Customer Services (RCS), to get confirmation that the email was from Raisin and not a phishing email. RCS were very friendly, but have no power to do anything except pass a message to the Onboarding Team.

Thus began a 3-week (and counting) process whereby the Onboarding team never respond to a request, don't acknowledge receipt of documents, don't follow up on anything - unless you submit a complaint.
Complaints are acknowledged within 1 week, but take 3 weeks to respond, and don't provide any update or anything.
Customer Services staff are very friendly and sympathetic but have absolutely no way of making anything happen - all they can do is send messages to other teams or update notes on one's account.

So, based on current experience, my advice would be to avoid Raisin if at all possible - deeply unhelpful and lazy admin teams, useless complaints process, and an internal system that seems designed to be incompetent.

But, what I wanted to ask was: 
Has anyone else had a similar experience of Raisin - is it notable for bad admin/onboarding?

And, if my experience of Raisin is not unique, is there any way of providing feedback to the team doing the MSE Savings page?

failed_dj

Sorry, I don't understand - are you saying that I've done 5 posts?
I think I've only posted this one comment

Or is it Raisin that you're talking about?

masonic

failed_dj said:

Sorry, I don't understand - are you saying that I've done 5 posts?
I think I've only posted this one comment

Or is it Raisin that you're talking about?

The spam button dealt with the post ColdIron was referring to. It wasn't you.

In answer to your question, experiences with Raisin, like many other providers is mixed. MSE bases their rankings on rates and incentives, not customer service, so there is little point following up with them.

ColdIron

failed_dj said:

Sorry, I don't understand - are you saying that I've done 5 posts?
I think I've only posted this one comment

Or is it Raisin that you're talking about?

No. The post has been deleted, I reported it and marked it as spam, I'll remove mine. I didn't want to quote the spam poster

Welcome to the forum

failed_dj

masonic said:

failed_dj said:

Sorry, I don't understand - are you saying that I've done 5 posts?
I think I've only posted this one comment

Or is it Raisin that you're talking about?

The spam button dealt with the post ColdIron was referring to. It wasn't you.

In answer to your question, experiences with Raisin, like many other providers is mixed. MSE bases their rankings on rates and incentives, not customer service, so there is little point following up with them.

Thanks for clarifying.

As for Raisin, i've been really surprised by how bad it's been - particularly the Onboarding team, and the fact that the customer services team (who've been really helpful) aren't really able to do anything except act as a postbox.

I've seen a few comments from people saying that there's often delays in getting money through, but nothing about the onboarding process, so it seems that I've just been unlucky.

Thanks also for the advice re: MSE.

Chloe_G

The website and process of adding/withdrawing money is not as user-friendly or intuitive as HL.

Milkbutnosugar

I wish that I had never invested via raisin.co.uk because their customer care is terrible.  Trustpilot.com confirms that with 22% one-star (the lowest rating) reviews.  Sadly, I went to raisin after seeing them mentioned in the MSE savings tables.  Please MSE, don't promote them again!  It's better to go directly to the bank or building society and cut out this strange middleman.

AndyTh_2

I avoided them just after starting registering quite a while ago, as they asked for my passport photos to be sent over email (email is not secure by default and only some mail senders/receivers are secure from server to server, more-so the case at the time than now though which has seen some improvement)

That and data retention on mailboxes and support systems is pretty bad

subjecttocontract

I use Raisin & HL mainly for fixed rate & notice accounts......I've had 8 matured accounts and currently have 6 open accounts with them. Never had any issues, transfer times have been very quick. My last Raisin account that matured took less than 24 hours between them paying out and depositing in another account with them. 

You can get, very slightly higher interest by opening accounts directly with the banks but the speed and ease of doing it via a platform outweighs the small loss of interest in my case. They aren't for everyone but they definitely are for me, I'm very pleased with both of them.

Albermarle

subjecttocontract said:

I use Raisin & HL mainly for fixed rate & notice accounts......I've had 8 matured accounts and currently have 6 open accounts with them. Never had any issues, transfer times have been very quick. My last Raisin account that matured took less than 24 hours between them paying out and depositing in another account with them. 

You can get, very slightly higher interest by opening accounts directly with the banks but the speed and ease of doing it via a platform outweighs the small loss of interest in my case. They aren't for everyone but they definitely are for me, I'm very pleased with both of them.

Do you know if they report your interest to HMRC or the providers do it themselves? Seems to be a grey area with these third party operators.

subjecttocontract

I don't know.
This has been discussed on the forum before and I believe the word is that neither Raisin or the providers report interest to HMRC....so yes very much a grey area that needs sorting by the tax people.

I keep records of interest I receive throughout the year and include Raisin in my self assessment but I suspect there must be a few individuals who will conveniently forget to include their income from platform providers. Then there are those who don't submit an SA........what happens there !