Guest's Review of Smile Current Account
3rd May 2008
Overall Rating
- Customer Service
- Ease of use
High interest rate on a current account.
Excellent service - and I have used them since the Coop Bank first openned this service (and Coop telephone banking 8 years before that).
Very easy to use online banking service, the easiest I have found, and I have used also used Abbey National, Yorkshhire Building Society, Alliance and Leicester, Bradford & Bingley.
Eco-friendly policy, Ethical Policy.
Bad Points
I honestly have not found any - they have always been excellent.
General Comments
I just think they other excellent service and would recommend their current account to anyone.
They usually come top, or very near top of independant surveys, so I have no idea why the feedback here is so unrepresentative (thats why I have wasted my precious time writing this!).
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Members' Comments onGuest's Review
zephyrx
on 11th May 2008
| Lender | Account | Description | Interest | AER | Overdraft | ||
| Overdraft Rate | Overdraft Limit | ||||||
 | Premier Direct Account | Earn a great rate of 6% AER (fixed for one year) on balances up to £2,500. | Monthly | 6.00% | 0.00% | £2,000.00 |  |
| Premier Current | Enjoy Free annual multi-trip European travel insurance and earn 0.50% AER on balances up to £2,500. | Monthly | 0.50% | 0.00% | £2,000.00 | |
 | Natwest Advantage Gold Account | Enjoy benefits worth up to £704 for just £12.95 a month. Including Mobile phone cover, Travel Insurance and even tailored rates on other Natwest products. | Monthly | 0.25% | N/A | | |
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With regards to Smile getting good independent survey results - those surveys are notoriously unreliable. Many people have massively different expectations of customer service. That's why Amazon always gets very high customer service results, yet all they really actually do for the most part is post out your goods to you.
I suspect with Smile, a lot of people who bank with them don't have especially high expectations of banking in general - the organisations you mention such as Abbey, Bradford & Bingley etc. were all organisations with a mutual history (as is Smile). Mutual organisations are notorious for their rather amateurish approach to things, and for under-investing in their infrastructure. Smile most certainly is in that category.
You also have to add in the fact that lots of people seem to bank with Smile for emotional reasons (i.e. they dislike the image of the nasty big banks, and like smile's ethical policy), which ends up in a very biased perception of the bank. They give the bank a 'cuddly' image which its customer service just does not merit, in the cold hard light of day.
I've banked with Smile since 2001, and I can honestly say I've never had worse customer service from any other financial institution. If I could afford to pay off what I owe them and move elsewhere, I would do so immediately.