Smile UK Arvostelua 

I have been with smile for over 20 years and they have become utterly unbearable with their abysmal customer service. Most of the staff who write replies to online secure questions clearly are idiots or do not have a sufficient command of the English language as their replies are almost always insufficient or irrelevant. It is soul destroying dealing with the staff who write replies to questions - at least in the past with telephone enquiries one could almost always get a solution to a problem. Every time I read "Hi" and then simply get an anonymous forename at the end I feel that I am being spoken to as if I am a primary school child. Their ghastly presumptuous informality merely deepens the awful experience of the majority of their staff who clearly have absolutely no idea about how to behave professionally. It is so sad: smile used to be a wonderful bank to deal with and had such courteous and efficient staff. No longer though: it is truly, truly awful.
Since writing the above review yesterday the cyber bullying by smile staff has increased and crucially the online banking website did not work for more than an hour early this morning when they repeatedly failed to allow me access to my statements because they repeatedly delayed for more than an hour to send an access code. Neither the human nor computer functions work properly but as for the horrendous bullying by the staff on line it now seems to know no limit.

I have just made an official complaint to the complaints department and an anonymous reply immediately closed it. The online banking staff are out of control, degenerate and dishonest. After approximately 20 years with smile I say loudly and clearly: don't go anywhere near them.

Joined a couple of months ago and I must say I am very happy I switched to Smile. I have spoken to their customer service team a couple of times and they have all been very helpful (maximum time I had to wait on the phone was 10 mins) and any questions I had were answered swiftly, respectfully and with some humour as well (made me SMILE).

The App is very easy to use and so is the online banking. I shop online quite regually and have not come up against any failed online payments as some other reviewers have stated.

Before joining Smile, I had been with Barclays and Chase. Personally, I found the customer service lacking with both these banks and rude at times.

It gives me peace of mind to know that should there be an issue, it won't feel like mind numbing experience to get in contact with the people at Smile.

So far a pleasure to bank with.

Update ! I suggest you educate your staff as they are refused to supply.
They refuse to provide Large print statements unless you pay. The is a Clear breach of the equalities Act 2010

Once again, the doom loop of failed online payments.
Presumably fraud protection but the attempted transactions are to another bank and previous transactions have been completed without issue, on more than one occasion.
No email or SMS sent as according to my last contact with Smile, a users phone is no longer a trusted device.
No online customer support or phone support available.
I have hung on for years but my tolerance is gone and I will be taking my business elsewhere.

Zero if I could. Company charged me twice for same payment, typical response from smile bank when asked them to do a charge back, oh we can't do that. Why? Cos we don't make the rules, sarcastic response from a jumped up customer service agent. Will be moving on, joke of a bank!!!!

Absolutely rubbish full of lies

I have banked with smile from when it first started and I'm still with them now. I run my account in a diligent manner and Apart from a couple of occasions using my card abroad I've never had any significant issues. Found them a superb bank for over a quarter of a century. I have no plans to leave smile bank. And no I do not work for smile or the cooperative bank. Xavier

I tried to send money over 24 hours ago, and the money still hasn’t reached the account I sent it to.
My account then got locked due to sending money, I called smile who told me to send an email to their fcm team to verify it’s me and the money would be released within 2 hours…

It’s now been 7 hours and the money still hasn’t been released to the Desired bank account I sent it to. I called smile who told at 17:40 today as I cannot get into the app either and the app says to call them and they can unlock it for me. After waiting on hold, I got connected, and they said they would put me on hold for 1 minute whilst they look into that. I ended up getting out on hold past 6pm in which the guy I spoke with said their system is now down and I should call them tomorrow and they will be happy to help (confident their phone lines close at 6pm).

Seems like I have to do all the work to get things done and I’m getting told different things about sending my money to the other bank account etc. all I want is for the money to be released and sent and to be able to use the app.

Hopefully this gets done in next 24 hours

Time and time again Smile block transfers without any email or text.
Made a transfer yesterday which left my account but 18 hours later still had not landed in the destination account.
I phoned up this morning and it was held.
They swear blind they have sent an SMS and email but I received neither.
This has happened time and time again, I have made a formal complaint before but it has never been resolved.
I made a formal complaint again today.
I did say after the last time this occured, I would change banks, unfortunately immediately after that, a change in my personal situation means this is currently not possible

I literally cannot use the card for anything online without the payment being declined. Just tried to pay a £7 parking fee. Declined. Fortunately I also have other more reliable cards.

After deposting cash over the counter I received a phone call from branch (using a number that comes up as spam!) 3 hours later! To be told that one of the notes i banked had a serial number cut out, untrue,and that the manager had inadvertently deposited £100 extra. And that they where removing the £120 from my account with no permission or investigation!
Lewisham branch is DEFINITELY not to be trusted and I'm no longer happy with the entire bank.

Dreadful. Can’t login to read an “urgent” message and now account locked. Again. No I haven’t forgotten my login details - you have !

So, yet again, my credit card was declined tonight on holiday. This is the second time this year when using Apple Pay with facial recognition. How much security do they need? As usual, no contact from Smile, so the only option is to phone up and go through the tedious process of phoning the customer contact centre when they open tomorrow. You keep getting terrible reviews and you’re doing nothing to improve your service for customers.

I opened an account with SMILE about 20 years ago, when they were a modern online banking service.
They now appear to be in a state of managed decline.
For example:
1. They recently withdrew the ability to make international transfer payments online (you now have to ring them up and provide the details over the phone after waiting forever on 'hold', needless to say at the customer's expense). Rather ludicrous for a service which is supposed to be 'online banking'.
2. They are in the process of removing the ability to confirm your identity by email, instead insisting that this is done using a UK-only mobile number. Which is useless for me as a I currently live in France.
3. Raising these issues with a secure message, I was told to ring up to discuss them further or to "visit a local branch of Co-Op" (which hardly exist any more).

We were with this bank for 20+ years. We chose it because it’s one of the more ethical ones, being part of the cooperative banking group. However over the past few years it’s gone downhill to the point that we have now left. You can’t contact them. It’s all through the website and you can only send a message which takes them 48 hours to respond. Except that they often don’t reply. You have to send a chaser message and wait another 48 hours to see if they respond. My wife’s card expired and they told us to wait until a certain point when a new card would be sent, but they didn’t send it. So the old card expired and she didn’t have a replacement. So we had to chase (48 hours+ between every message). In the meantime my wife had no bank card. Apple Pay wouldn’t work, even though the bank had told her it would. That was the final straw. We closed the accounts, switched to another supplier. Of course, after closing the accounts, the card arrived. No one contacted us to ask why we were leaving, let alone try to persuade us to stay.

Trying to cancel my Credit Card which I no longer use so I log in and send secure message. I'm Informed in return that I have a secure message/ reply so go to login to read. I'm then informed that I cannot login (although I'm using the same login details as before) as my details are incorrect! Try to reset details only to be told the reset service is not working! Phone to try and get a response to be told the usual 'Due to get the excessive call load ...... '. FINALLY I get to speak to a human being who confirms that my secure message (that I cannot see) has resulted in the cancellation of my card. Thank goodness I transferred my current account, etc to another bank recently as Smile communication/ systems have deteriorated so much over the years.

Terrible service and impossible to contact. They decline card payments for trivial amounts and for transactions that I make regularly, then they take 24 hours or more to ring to check if I had authorised the payment (I had already gone through the password and authentication). This time I lost a good value car hire deal. Last time they left me abandoned on the outskirts of Budapest.

Terrible.

From a good service when it began to an awful one - the app does not work and has very limited capability, the website does not work (in many many many ways), and the phone banking service is limted to only helping with technical issues, which there are of course many.

The latest example: I have tried to pay off my credit card using my current account and the payment has not appeared after 24 hours. Most banks it's instantaneous - with Smile I have no idea where my money is and if it will even arrive.

Asking for help using their messaging service? Yeah done that and all you get is a canned response and even that takes an excessive amount of time.

Disgusting service that should be shut down.

My credit card was declined when I tried to buy a new mobile phone from Amazon on Black Friday. Smile sent me a text asking me to confirm the transaction after 3 layers of existing authentication which I did. Another text was received with the message saying try again in 5 minutes which I did. I wasted some time trying to buy my phone using my Smile Visa but it was consistently declined before my Wife stepped in and bought my new phone with her card.

After this I tried to buy new tyres for my car from Black Circles – again my card was declined but no communication was received from Smile.

I tried to call Smile to get this resolved but limited call hours and long call queuing times prevented me speaking to them.

My card continued to be accepted for high street purchases.

Much angst with messaging back and forth resulted in a stand off where the bank needed to speak to me but I was unable to beat the call queue and they would not call me.

Took the easier option of getting a replacement credit card from another provider.

Tried moving funds to an account I hold with another bank(sent by faster payment) the money is taken out of my account but a day later I still haven’t received them. Payment status just says unknown-Facebook messenger help was no use,tried to ring and I’ve currently been on hold over an hour. Only opened the account this week but already regret doing so