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“Avoid - costly service for zero help!”

written by nayth.ferris on 11/01/2015

Forget them. I used ThinkMoney for about 1 year. I thought it would help me grow up and keep control of my money - instead - I was just giving away £180 a year for terrible banking service.

Depositing money: Sincere Pain! Living in a major city, there is 2 RBS branches I can use to deposit and collect money. Problem? To collect money you need to organize this and make sure you collect it when you say you do. They remove it from your balance before you have even collected the money as there account is not 'live' or connected in anyway to RBS who they just use as a facility provider (they also provide the account for ThinkMoney).
Secondly, RBS branches are typically central and therefore you have to pay to park to visit. Compare the big banks and building societies - who have branches in villages outside the town centre, most have around 6 branches alone in my city.

Telephone service - Rude, unproffesional, every member of staff says things differently and if you complain, they do nothing about it. Usually just say "they followed their internal procedures"

Online banking - To be honest, there online banking is good. Problem though - it isn't the ONLY option with ThinkMoney, you have to use their telephone banking and branches (though RBS) some aspects of the account.

Card - Mastercard is fine. Works fine. Its not 'offline' so it wont work on things like Self-serve Pay at Pumps etc, but this shouldnt be a shock to anyone who is used to Basic accounts. Problem though - the card is very poor quality and if the chip begins to fail (mine did and I only used it as a day to day current account like I should have been able to) they will charge you the liberty of £5 for there poor quality of card.

Social media - Useless. If you complain or make problems clear via social media, facebook etc. They simply block you from posting on there. If you complain, like I did by email - they seem to never respond.

Credit - Quick to offer you credit at big interest rates. This isnt really a issue and could benefit some. If your bad at managing your own money, which majority of account users of this service will be - hardly a proffesional service attempting to get you further in debt.

FASTER PAYMENTS - Leaving your account? They are not FASTER at all.
Coming into your account? Depends on when the transaction is made. They update there balances at set times not LIVE so sometimes you can wait up to the max of 4 hours.

AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE. Anyone who doesn't take complaints seriously, has to hide bad press on their facebook by banning users posting on their page, have no where near enough staff to handle call volumes and then decide to charge for that service is clearly a joke.

Nationwide, RBS themselves, Natwest, Santander, Lloyds, TSB and Co-Op will all OFFER YOU basic accounts (they are not so advertised) free of charge with LIVE balance updates, faster payments both ways and cheque services that are much quicker than ThinkMoney. They will also have banks close to you.