From: "BrianW" 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Banks Survey Rankings
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 23:02:38 GMT


"Daytona"  wrote in message
news:99icf0p0hpcuigskcgl4d49pi798nsod1k@4ax.com...
> I've just filled the latest Virtual Surveys Online Banking Survey
> (V-OBS) conducted on behalf of the banks and at the end they gave the
> Q1 2004 results from the survey which I've copied here for anyone
> interested in opening a new account or changing bank accounts. The
> results tend to mirror the Which? magazine surveys
>  and previous comments on the group
> 
>
> "You might be interested in some past results from this survey. The
> chart below shows how online banks compare overall. Marks are out of
> 5. 5 represents excellent, 1 represents poor, so the higher the score,
> the better the rating!
>
> 3.9 Average Bank
>
> 4.5 Smile
> 4.4 First Direct
> 4.3 Cooperative
> 4.1 Nationwide
> 4.0 HSBC
> 4.0 Cahoot
> 3.8 Lloyds TSB
> 3.8 RBS
> 3.8 NatWest
> 3.7 Egg
> 3.7 Barclays
> 3.7 Halifax
> 3.6 IF
> 3.6 Abbey National
> 3.6 Alliance & Leicester"
>
> A complete list of surveys is available here
> 

So there's only a 20% difference between the best and the worst. Tell Which?
that.

At least Egg could readvise me of my credit card PIN online. Nationwide?
They couldn't even readvise me by any means - they had to send me a new one,
and only after my online request was refused "because the message content
was inappropriate", so I had to phone up. Crap web site, with abysmal
functionality. A pity, since they have some good deals such as low foreign
exchange transaction costs on their credit cards and a good interest rate on
ESaver - 0.25% better than Egg.

Brian