Smile UK Recenzje 

I have banked with smile since 2005, have a current account, a joint account and a savings account. 5 weeks ago my current account was defrauded out of £20,000. I rang on the day I suspected something, and was told they would block the account...that night another £10,000 was taken. No advice of this. I rang the following day to be told they wouldnt investigate without a crime reference number. Gave them the crime reference number...rang two days later...nothing. And I have rung EVERY OTHER DAY FOR 5 WEEKS!! No information forthcoming at all, get a simple"we are investigating"...cant escalate the complaint, cant speak to a manager, cant speak to the fraud team....they simply arent bothered!! Is that the support I get in a time of need from an institution I have trusted with every penny I had, for over 18 years? Shocking customer service, apathetic, incompitant....put those words in your ads! I actually have a First Direct account (for another purpose) and one 10 minute call to them started the transfer process for a new current account....and they want to give me £250 for switching! Now THAT is how a bank should behave! The second I get my money back (and I will sue the backsides off them if I dont!) I will be closing the accounts and moving to a bank that actually WANTS to help its customers. Avoid like the plague!!!!

The process of closing is painful too.
I paid off a Smile credit card.
The transaction doesn't initially show in the Smile account sending the money.
Then a couple of days later it does appear in the credit card account.
The account balance is now £0.00 (as displayed).
Send secure message to close credit car account.
Reply, cannot close until balance is £0.00.... you have 0.85p credit, where should Smile transfer it too??
Check again, balance is £0.00...err it appears some displayed amounts are rounded to the nearest £.
Reply to Smile and told them where to transfer the 0.85p to.
Transfer happens, Credit card account still says £0.00 but a while later finally closed.
I still can't believe the incorrect information displayed during logins.

Smile...please, please for all your customers, look at your website again, fix its process paths, test it properly from a customer usage perspective and do display information correctly and in a timely manner.

Lastly, Sammie...you can find me without me having to contact you as asked...you've replied to secure messages on my account. Maybe join the dots.....?

I have been with this bank since they started but over the past years the service has downgraded to such an extent that I have started to search for another provider.
The website is awful......ridiculous requests for verification codes when accessing transactions.
Difficulty when trying to transfer money, transfer being held up for 'security' reasons with no notice given.
Inability to produce statements for recent transactions.
Inability to anyone to talk to about issues.

There is no longer a date function for downloading a csv file. If you select download csv you just get a fixed date.
I had to fill in the gaps by copying and pasting from pff files. This is a nightmare. Incidentally the pdf files are not contiguous. The files on pdf are meaningless and very annoying if you are trying to negotiate several at once.

Was a great bank 15-20 years ago, but since then when times where hard they totally stitched me up. Since then times have gotten better for me but they've continued to be bad in other ways by blocking payments for their own security and putting draconian measures in place that caused embarrassment at the checkout. More recently I've just found their app to be out of date and their service to be decades out of date. I've remembered all this and moved to Starling and I don't know myself, it's amazing and was so painless to switch. But I think there are other good online only banks like Revolut and Monzo so I would recommend one of those. These old banks deserve to lose all their customers I'm afraid.

I occasionally receive cheques and I needed more paying in envelopes to pay them in at the local Post Office. Used secure messaging via internet banking and had a reply within 24 hours and the envelopes arrived in the post within a week. Very happy with how efficient that was. Thanks.

I have called three times over about six weeks to ask for statements. Each time I was promised that they would be sent but I still have not received them. Since Smile blames the postman, I've asked for them to be sent securely electronically. Smile refuses this for 'privacy reasons' which seems like a poor excuse as so much material is sent electronically with no problem by most institutions handling sensitive data.

It is unacceptable that this simple request has been carried out and that after more than a month, my query is still not satisfied. The complaints team got in touch and put pressure on me to close the complaint - but of course the statements still not received.

It doesn’t support most third party banking apps.
Cards payment get blocked for no reason at all.
Interest rates are poor at best.
App functionality is behind most others, eg online cheque payments.

Got a call back explaining that website and app is being updated.
No plans to make interest rates competitive.
Card issues are for my security. Which is a joke, currently blocked from making Vehicle Tax payment on a Gov.Uk site.

Second time I called Smile to find out what's happening with my account opening application. After a 1 hour (!) wait, Customer Services (Colm) said they had no info and couldn't escalate my complaint or put me on phone to a manager. Eventually I was told a letter is being sent in the post but no info at all on the status of my application. There was no record of my last call to them a few days ago, and they did not call me back to advise if my ID docs had been received. Terrible customer services -not their fault - they are not given the systems, empowerment or training clearly. If Smile do actually open my account, I will close it as they do not handle customer enquiries. Avoid - zero smiles. Robo investing would be better service!

Terrible bank now sad as we have been with them for over 20 years and they used to be good. No other bank blocks funds transfers and they clearly have liquidity issues (the pretence is fraud checks). A bank to leave as a customer and an employee.

This bank has gone downhill rapidly. Awful customer service, I have now had a so called "faster payment" to one of my outside accounts held in limbo for a week now, so it is gaining no interest at all anywhere. I have made several payments to this outside account of mine beforehand and since, yet this particular "faster payment" is still being held in limbo, it was made on a Friday (I guess the staff are even worse on that day!).

I have been forced twice now to call their anti-fraud to get payments through as they no longer accept you verifying payment via text (Yes or No, or code verification), first call to an 0345 number (at cost to myself, which no doubt Smile make a profit from) was 19 minutes long, second call was 16 minutes long where they go through the same long checklist again and again, treating you as if you are an imbecile, they are not polite either. They used to carry through payments via secure message on their site, not any longer, they now expect you to instead answer calls from unknown numbers and answer security questions from the unknown telephone numbers, sheer madness and a major security risk. What is the point of secure messaging if you have to keep phoning at cost to get a payment though to the same place again and again with the same checklist designed to delay you on the phone, so they get more call profit off you, you try getting a refund for these calls and it's like trying to get blood from a stone. Third call I made was just same repeated delaying automatic message and music, I gave up on the call after several minutes.

I have been a customer of theirs for over 20 years and you still get the feeling that you are being treated as if you are some kind of criminal.

I am fed up to the backteeth of this ever increasing poor service and will be looking to switch elsewhere very soon!

I was an early adopter in the late 90s as this bank met my needs due to its savvy online approach and I worked full time, long hours so didn't need to use a physical bank. They were ahead of their time but for the last few years it's deteriorated. I have finally pulled the plug. Their mortgage and the staff themselves are pretty good when you do managed to get hold of them - absolutely not an issue with their service as people - as they do genuinely seem to care and dealt with issues for me swiftly.

However, visa secure is what has killed it for me and the authentication to use anything at all is getting tedious and over-bearing. Trying to pay for anything online is a rigmarole. I understand wanting to protect people, I really do but it's become a barrier to actual smooth banking. Also, why not send me a message in the system about my overdraft where I'd let the account go dormant but realised there was still 2 scheduled payments which caused it. That's my fault but you wrote me a letter - how odd in the digital era. While you're a generally ethical bank and your staff are ace, the system, the policies and the ongoing battle with authentication is a headache when you want simplicity. Sometimes, I worry that when automation or AI finally takes hold, vulnerable customers will be put at risk and unable to get to their money at all or use services. Can you imagine an elderly person with poor eyesight and fragility trying to deal with that 12 character visa secure authentication and the verification code? Seriously?? And when it then times out because you have to change the phone browser window to get to the text message and then come back to the verification screen - what kind of UX nightmare is that? Starling manages to do this without throwing me into a cesspit of self hate.

Had a issue with a transaction with my credit card. I phoned them and they answered within 10 minutes. The issue was resolved and the representative was extremely efficient and friendly.

Their website still looks like it was designed by a 5-year-old. It just never gets better, year after year.

And when I tried to move £20,000 to a different account - which they could see was ALSO in my name, they automatically blocked it, and I had to spend THIRTY-FIVE minutes calling them, to get them to unblock it.

I'd even tried to pre-empt this farce by sending them a Secure Message via their website (after securely logging in)... but the customer services team openly admitted they didn't have access to these messages.

Even worse, when you telephone their customer services number, your are prompted to enter your account number and sort code... but staff admit they don't even have access to these values.. they can't tell who you are!!

Bad customer service, on top of bad customer service.

The next day... Even though I had told them, through their own secure website, that I'd be making the same transaction, to the same back account, still in my name, they blocked it.

They made no effort to contact me, by phone, to verify the transaction.
I'm not willing to spend 35 minutes on their rubbish helpline, each time I want to move my own money out of my own Smile account, into another account - which I've told them I'm going to do - also in my own name.

They. Are. Terrible.
Protect against fraud, yes.
Common sense.... No. They have none.

I have never had any problem with Smile and have always found their customer service to be very good. Saj was extremely helpful and pleasant today.

Truly the worst trust pilot profile I've ever seen.

100% genuine reviews stating all the problems .. amusing they actually bother replying when they should be fixing the issues

Anyway I've banked for 20 years, but despite the huge stickiness of current account products i may actually move on soon

The issues
1/ Website and app are absolute dinosaurs from 1990s web and are not user friendly at all
2/ Systems are very slow and unresponsive ... payments hanging in the ether for hours unlike other banks
3/ fraud checks are totally overbearing ... it's not enough to confirm a payment, but now have to be talked to like an idiot for 15 minutes then be told they can't make a payment as they can't rule out email fraud
4/ contact centre overburdened and unresponsive as a result of issues above presumably

Anyway .. under no circumstances should you join this bank .. and existing customers should probably leave.

So sad because it's a pioneer of uk internet banking and a social enterprise ... how did it come to this guys?

If you want a bank that
1) Takes forever to answer the phone
2) Allows 5 fraudulent accounts to be set up in your name in the space of a week.
3) Takes a month to resolve this issue leaving you without any banking services.
4) During this period tells you several times that your account and cards are unblocked, when they are not causing huge embarrassment in supermarkets, garage forecourts etc.
5) When you try to use the switch guarantee service blocks you from doing so , WITHOUT TELLING YOU.

Then this is the bank for you. I was a customer for 20 years and am now manually having to move all my direct debits etc to FIRST DIRECT, who are so far proving far superior , if only for the fact that they pick up the phone.

As a sole trader they have threatened to do a Nigel Farage on me (close the account down) 👎

Hello Smile

Here's a quote from me to you:
'Cant uphold complaint blah, blah, what I expected, so I think Ill close this account and continue to make frequent bad reviews on Trustpilot. I finished the call and your service said theyd deal with it. I dont accept call from unknown numbers for obvious reasons. So fix this problem or tell me what you need *here* to fix it, since youve already lied when you said it was fixed and made a mistake too. Fix the punctuation on this messaging too.'

Im obviously not going to go onto Facebook, I don't have an account there and it's very, very unprofessional and insecure of Smile to suggest this as a medium for messaging.

To anyone else reading this, please don't open an account at Smile. I did, for ethical reasons, but in terms of its poor customer care, arrogance with regard to customer service it's just like (or worse) than any other 'ordinary' bank.

I don't want this 'looked into further' either, you must have recorded all the original conversation for 'quality and training purposes', so now, get your 'CEO' (or someone) to sort it out and don't try and victim blame me for your mess.

I have been transferring money from Smile to a higher interest savings account at a different bank over the past week (Smile put a limit on each transfer). Each time I have made a transfer they have sent a text to me to confirm that I want to make this transfer, and I have said yes.

I did my final transfer on Sunday 6th August (4 days ago now), and the destination bank still has not received it. I have not received a text to confirm this transaction as I have every other time. Every day my account shows the transferred amount as going out on whatever the current day is.

I contacted Smile support, who first totally ignored what my question actually was and just said oh yes that is scheduled to go out today.

On my next contact to address this non-response, I have now been told, oh it has been flagged for potential fraud, and if you didn't get a text (I did not) then you should phone x phone number. There is a link in this message so you can see what the phone costs are, but the page it links to does not exist.

So, I had not even been told that my payment was being held pending in the potential fraud process, and even though I have made a series of same amount transfers to the same new banking destination over the past week, I must now speculatively phone a paying phone service to try to get my money transferred.

The casual attitude and lack of information from Smile is appalling, and my money is now stuck in a Smile limbo and I must get myself involved in the chaotic Smile banking process in order to try to get it back.