RE: FN-FORUM: Which bank?

date posted 19th January 2007 22:12

I'm in also in the situation of choosing a business bank. For personal =20
banking I'm with Natwest, constantly dissapointed with their service, =20
but too lazy to switch right now. I would never trust Natwest with =20
anything more than handling the income of my monthly salary. Gonna =20
swith soon, I promise. Rude staff, rude staff, RUDE STAFF.

For a business bank, I havent seen anything beat Alliance & Leister =20
for strarting up on paper, but previous contributors seem to have bad =20
experience. In terms of online security I like Natwest online banking. =20
They ask for random digits of your login and password rather than your =20
full login and password (which I believe some other UK banks do).

Saying that, I feel more secure with my Finnish bank, which requires a =20
unique password every time I log in (mostly eliminating exploatiation =20
my data mining etc). The passwords are sent out by mail (by the bank) =20
and you get 50 or so in one go. Different pin every time you log in. =20
Might seem like a faff on to some, but I feel pretty secure.

Personally, I'm going to go with Alliance & Leister (while researching =20
other options highlighted in this thread) to start with and if =20
problems arise, like previous contributors have highlighted, just =20
switch.

Johan

Quoting Andy Henderson [EMAIL REMOVED]

>
> Lindsay Baugh wrote:
>> Mike A wrote:
>> < Banks tend to change over the years but on a consistently poor
>> basis, banks to stay clear of are NatWest, HSBC, Royal Bank of
>> Scotland and Bank of Scotland. They use a creaming technique for
>> charges.>
>>
>> If your transaction volumes are low and you have the right sort of
>> account, you can enjoy virtually free business banking with HSBC -
>> apart from overseas transfers and a few other extras. If your
>> personal bank account is with First Direct, then it definitely makes
>> sense, because transfers in both directions are free and instant.
>> Perhaps we've been lucky - I'm happy with both.
>>
>> Lindsay
>
> We just switched back to HSBC because we will get free banking (we don't
> need any of the features that can incur charges). We switched from Allian=
ce
> & Leicester because its online banking is poor and they wanted to start
> charging us for our 'free banking' account.
>
> My wife is company secretary and treasurer and sent the following rant to
> A&L just before we decided to leave. We've never had an acknowledgement,
> let alone a response...
>
> It took me 30 minutes to get logged on initially and sort out all the
> different user names, log on IDs passwords etc. even though I have been
> using internet banking for several years with various other banks as well =
as
> yours. After an hour the site had slowed down to such a level that I had =
to
> give up and try the next day.
>
> Fortunately the first payment I tried to make was not to an important
> client/supplier as I then found I could not authorise the payment without
> setting up a Group and Profile.
>
> I then had to enlist the help of an IT specialist in the company to explai=
n
> the instructions and help me work through them. We are a small company as
> I'm sure the majority of your users will be, it would have been helpful to
> have a simpler set-up for single users or at least separate uncomplicated
> instructions.
>
> We then puzzled over the Warning message when we tried to sign the payment
> about the 2 days in advance business. All other sites I use have a check
> box to choose either pay immediately or enter a date.
>
> Why do we need 2 passwords just to access accounts - I can't see how this
> gives extra security.
>
> The help text is not context sensitive.
>
> There are innumerable irritating details on your site compared to other
> internet banking sites that seem to betray a corner cutting approach.
>
> I was not happy with your previous Internet Banking site and was hoping fo=
r
> an improvement but I'm afraid My Business Bank is not it! Please pass the=
se
> comments to the relevant team.
>
> Andy
>
>
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