What's the worst feature of your legacy bank?

I can’t answer that. My intention wasn’t to rail against them, but to provide detailed descriptions of the types of issues I faced so these can be proactively avoided.

The infuriating lack of information about why a transfer in from outside the EU costs £15. Their website consistently says it would cost £6. I called them before, and they transferred me across three departments - no one was able to tell me why I’m charged >2x. :rage:

Won’t happen with a tech company.

(Barclays)

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Having terms and conditions that change regularly, and them sending really long emails /letters, and not really being clear what the change is (i.e. what was the original position and how is the new change different or going to help me). Those letters remind me of Apple t&cs…ypure not really sure what’s happening and you don’t read a massive long list of legal sounding words.
Also don’t like having to go to ATMs for added security if you don’t have the little 'calculator thing, which always gets lost. Also don’t like having the calculator thing either

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Oh, and I also hate it when you ring up a bank and it’s an automated voice, and you have to shout your personal details down a phone (which you generally do whilst on a bus or walking, cos time management skills) and it never understands you so you end up screaming at your phone saying 'talk to an agent/real person over and over again, and now you’re in a huff. If you’re going to have a phone line, have real people. (This also applies to all tupes of companies, not just banks)

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While it’s not a legacy bank, but reminded me of something. Revolut took it to a new level, Revolut has RITA (that’s acronym for something fancy, I’m sure). That’s a chat bot. It recognises keywords from your questions and sometimes will throw a correct FAQ link, though I’m pretty sure it’s not even doing any smart search, just flat keyword match.

It once took me six attempts to trigger chat to real human being, 4 wrong keywords, one typo and only sixth one was successful. I also may have added some packs of additional punctuation (and they don’t work well in packs, don’t they…), much to my disgust with myself later. :unamused:

The idea that Support rep most likely could read my pathetic attempts when they finally picked up my query was a bit discomforting. :roll_eyes::zipper_mouth_face::disappointed::fearful:

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I found HSBC was by far the cheapest for SEPA compared to NatWest and Lloyd’s.

I hate that I can’t close my Santander account by post. Can’t find an up to date address for them anywhere :frowning:

Christ alive… Where to even begin?

Bank of Scotland

  • Still haven’t updated their iOS app to support High DPI displays. When did this first become available on iPhones again, somewhere in the 17th century?
  • Supporting TouchID to login, but requiring my password to confirm any action. The password I don’t remember, because all my passwords are uniquely generated.
  • Fully logging you out when you tab out to check 1Password for the password you generated, requiring you to restart whatever you were doing. Hope the information you entered wasn’t time sensitive in any way, such as your pal giving you their bank details for a quick transfer or someone giving you the details over the phone. Enjoy asking them again, and looking like an idiot.
  • Your password has a minimum and maximum length. I, too, enjoy incorrectly hashing passwords. VARCHAR(16) is my favourite data type for storing passwords.
  • I love the 0.5s sliding animations whenever I tap on anything, it doesn’t waste my time in any way.
  • I especially love the fact that my incorrect balance is displayed in massive numbers, but the “available” balance is displayed in teeny tiny writing underneath.
  • I don’t even want to think of what Satanic rituals I would have to go through to get a replacement card. I bet they would make me phone them up, though, which would be just lovely for my anxiety regarding talking to strangers on the phone.

NatWest

  • That sodding card reader. Stick this magical card in, turn the device on, press a button, enter 8 digits, receive 8 digits back. What in Odin’s name is this nonsense, I’ve already authenticated with my customer number, password and memorable word.
  • I hope you weren’t thinking of amending your weekly Standing Order the day before it goes out. Or the day after. Or indeed any time other than a small window of time in the middle of the week, but not after regular opening hours. What do you think this is, an online accounts interfa… What do you mean this is an online accounts interface? WELL I STILL DON’T CARE, YOU’RE DOING AS TOLD.

If I sound like I’m bitter about how out of touch these companies are, it’s because I am.

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Worst feature for me at this moment in time is the fact that a single account has so many different passwords and memorable bits of information needed to access it. Took hours to get into my internet banking today because I kept getting locked out. Thought it was because I was getting some memorable information wrong, reset it, still locked out. Eventually with the help of the support person realised it was one of the passwords I’d got wrong so ended up resetting everything. Hopefully should remember it from this point on but they really don’t make it easy for you

tl;dr can’t remember all the tens of different passwords and bits of information needed to access account.

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Call them up and ask. Only 40 mins on hold, you can do it! :smiley:

Best method is to store them in password manager. I had a lot of password, keywords, words, pins, sequences set up and/or bullshit answers to security questions. I once called Virgin Media and they asked me for phone password. I was totally clueless, forgot all about it, it was set up or sent to me via post, I honestly don’t know. But password manager had it. :wink:

Starling does this if you want to edit payee details.

Want to change the image associated with a payee? Password required, says Starling.

WTF? I thought they were a challenger Bank?

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Just remembered a really bad experience from the late 90’s where NatWest took money from a separate account to honour a rent payment that should have declined as it had been cancelled from the paying account. Still claimed and so they just took it from a different account. So two failures led to me being very short back then and having to fight to get my own money back. First was the landlord presenting even though we had moved on, notice served and moved out. Second was that the authority I’d given had been cancelled. They took it anyway and their CS quoted some or other clause that allowed them to do that. '98 I think it was. Same year I moved to Barclays.

Passwords are stupid anyway, I’m glad Monzo doesn’t just use TouchID as a wrapper for a regular login interface.

…wait, did you say you need your password to change a payee’s image? Like their avatar… that is just a headshot uploaded from your phone… I… what? How is that a secure action?

I mean sure, I too would hate to have all my contacts’ images replaced with memes or whatever, but if someone stole my phone, that’s not exactly what I’d be concerned about.

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Yes.

I tried Starling. I’ve given them comprehensive feedback on the section of their app for setting up payments. It is deeply flawed. It’s as though a techie has come up with it all by himself without giving any thought to the user experience, efficiency of any sort or even looked at how the competition does it (RBS and First Direct have apps far superior to Starling). Then they threw “security” at it.

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I’m not a customer of all these banks anymore but have been previously.

Child’s/RBS & Natwest

  • Random part of my security number and random parts of the password instead of just all of it.
  • Unable to edit standing orders 3 days before it goes out without the world ending.
  • Card reader to set up new payments.
  • Card reader to amend current payments.
  • Card reader to change a number of current payments.
  • Card reader.
  • Card reader.
  • No confirmation your old Natwest student account was accidentally £3 into your overdraft and over a year accumulated hundreds of pounds of debt before you realise, pay it off and cancel the account.
  • Stating via adverts and publicity material that they would never cut branches - then decides to cut thousands of branches.

First Direct

  • Website made in about the 16th century.
  • Sacrificing a virgin goat on the 3rd day of a full moon just to log in.
  • Secure key when resetting a new iPhone fails so need to phone bank to reset it.
  • Needing a secure device to transfer money so when having a new phone have limited access to an account.

Tesco Bank

  • Having to look at a picture just to check you are you.
  • Having your hundreds of accounts hacked because of lousy backend security and how accounts were setup.

NS&I

  • 3 days to withdraw any money.
  • Customer service takes weeks to reply satisfactorily.
  • Will not officially reply via email or secure messages. Only by post.

Monzo Bank (I’m just being fair)

  • Potential overdraft fees a flat fee not a percentage ‘to keep it simple’ yet other things like potential foreign ATM fees to be a percentage to not keep it simple. (I don’t use foreign ATM’s but have big opinion of the overdraft fees which I won’t go into anymore.)
  • No website access.

Starling Bank

  • Need password to set up payee after already using TouchID and pins.
  • No website access.

Halifax

  • Stupid transition animations in the app.
  • Owned by Lloyds.
  • Continuous spam via post and email. I don’t want a loan Halifax. I don’t want home insurance. Leave me be!

Smile/Coop Bank

  • Drug taking chief executives.
  • Poor investment decisions almost bankrupting itself.
  • Very poor ‘new’ website UI.
  • Changing how you log in after 17-odd years ‘to make it modern’.
  • Trying to log in and it resets back to the beginning randomly.
  • Security telephone call when buying an expensive item when the answer to the questions has been option 2, option 2 and option 2 for the last 10 years. It has never changed from option 2.
  • Card reader.
  • Card reader.
  • Told you can only use the website’s secure message to contact customer service and not allowed to telephone.
  • When sending a secure message asking to change a direct debit, then asked to telephone?! Make your mind up.
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I’m a techy and I can see that the UX there is awful. Would suggest that is probably more a “get to MVP quickly and cut corners” than people not knowing it is bad design. It is easier just to require max security for everything related to a payee, rather than have conditionals. Easier to build, worse for the user :frowning:

DKIM is in widespread use, though. This’ll give you an idea as to integrity.

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At least the Natwest card reader works with other banks that require it (Barclays), you don’t have to use a Natwest one.

HSBC’s passkey generator annoys me but i guess it’s better than having to carry around the tiny calculator on a keyring that they used to have.

BarclayCard send me post EVERY time Android has an OS update or you reset / change phone. I go through app setup again and they send me a letter, ‘Welcome to the BarclayCard app’. I guess they are using the Android keychain which gets a new private key when you update your pin / OS / reset, rather than rolling their own encryption onto device storage.

the TSB app annoys me. I was very excited to see a brand new app for them about a month ago.

I then registered for it and seen the poor effort they out into it:

  1. only 3 months of transactions showing in the app.
  2. transactions for this month are listed by day but previous months are grouped by the month and you have to tap on it to find the date.
  3. no running balance next to transactions
  4. pending transaction list is often missing transactions, i had a £20 difference between cleared and available but only one transaction showing in pending for a fiver.
  5. the animations are not relevant to me. one of a dad holding babies, one of a man and a woman on a couch and another that shows a woman doing something differnet. I am a single gay guy in his 20s with no kids. these animations are not very inclusive. It seems odd that TSB would chosse animations that dont represent their diverse customer base.
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Lloyds app not being optimised for larger screened iPhones… STILL!

Hurts my eyes.

RBS down for maintenance again this weekend… AGAIN!