I'll start with the good. The staff are polite and friendly most of the time. Now the bad. The balance doesn't update quickly, it lets you go overdrawn on a basic account, they keep sending threatening letters saying they will close your account if you make a mistake and payments seem to take a while to come through via faster payment. Their internet banking is next to useless as you never know how much money is actually available in your account. One time when I had some questions about going overdrawn, they simply asked me to read my terms and conditions. Hardly helpful or ethical in my opinion. The switching process caused some direct debits to be missed causing me to owe late payment fees. All in all, I'm leaving them to go back to barclays. The grass is not always greener.

I had one of these accounts and they are a pain in the neck. You pay for something with the debit card and you might think the money has left your account in an instant, when in fact it can take the bank up to 10 days to get that transaction processed (why so long?). This happened to me and I went overdrawn by £50, which I was willing and able to credit the account and pay into the account that day. But Co-operative Bank decided to close my account without any warning, only when I went to pay the money in I found out the account was closed, and just two 2 days before my pay was going into my account. All of my direct debits and standing orders cancelled in an instant. Most unreasonable bank your could ever deal with and hard to keep track of your payments. Delighted to be leaving them and found it easy to open up another account in the high street without any fuss. Personally I wouldn't bother considering do any dealings with them unless you totally desperate for a basic bank account.

The Co-operative Cash Minder is a great starter account or for anyone with seriously impaired credit rating. Easy to setup (in branch or on phone only however)
Direct debits and standing orders
VISA Electron is accepted in more places than you think!
Online banking
1 of only 2 accounts that accept undischarged bankrupts, and by far the best!