Smile UK Avis 

every faster payment stopped, spent 1 hour 20 minutes on hold, the some arrogant no it all in the Fraud team decides to continually read a script regarding fraud then he would not release my funds to my account unless I stated "if this is a fraudulent transaction I will Lose MY MONEY" then advised that now that I have sent money to my own accounts (these were verified accounts by the way) I would not have the same problem again!!! well guess what I tried to send money again and to my utmost amazement it happened again and my money is now floating around the fraud dept, on all 4 occasions at no point have I had any notifications from this poor excuse of a bank to advise that the incompetents have yet again blocked my money from going to my accounts!!! Really do wish I had read the reviews before signing up to this shambles of a Bank, Incompetence appears to be systemic, I WILL BE LEAVING

I recently posted a review regarding extremely excessive wait times during multiple 'failed' attempts to speak with Smile's call centre. To be fair to Smile, I received a reply asking for more details quite quickly, and after submitting this info I was called within a reasonable timeframe to resolve matters. As a consequence, I have updated this review and upgraded my star rating to 4 from 2. I can't give 5 due to the orginal issue being far from ideal, but as my complaint has been thoroughly dealt with and a sincere apology received, it is only fair that credit is given where it is due!

Have been with Smile since 2000 as wanted an ethical bank and online suited as am disabled. Their customer service was great and agents very friendly.
Yesterday out of blue needed to send money abroad.. Disappointed to find that international transfer could only be done by phone now! Customer service agent was not very friendly and seemedca little out of his depth.
Once I started to give details he was unable to find a country called Senegal or currency used there! Numerous times I told him it was in w. Africa and he kept saying, is that South Africa?
I also gave him the name of currency used there (Cfa) but it took him several minutes to find it and offered me Burkino Faso and Sierra Leone! Every word had to be spelt out as foreign address... In the end I got so frustrated, after having waited 15 mins to get through as well, I terminated the call. I decided to transfer money to my building society and make the international transfer from there. All completed online in 20 mins with no issues. Great follow up and email confirmation.

However following my critical feedback I was contacted by a more senior agent who explained that the international transfer was by phone only due to excessive fraud and that it would be possible to transfer online again soon. He was very helpful and will look into more training for the agents.
Really pleased with the outcome of my complaint and am still real supporter of Smile for their strict ethical policies and the fact that their call centres are based in the UK.

I have been a customer for almost 25 years, and service now seems to be at the worst level in all of that time. Anything more than a nominal payment with a debit or credit card to a new or occasional payee is stopped, due to overly cautious fraud prevention controls. There are very long delays when calling customer service (an hour or more is common), and menus are unduly cumbersome to get to a call handler. However, I have found call handlers are helpful and polite if you have the time and patience to wait for someone to become available. Responses from online messaging normally take days, rather than hours. App and online banking are both unreliable, with frequent and long-lasting outages, and no proper indication of timescale for availability. What were once class-leading interfaces were overtaken by competitors some time ago.

Website seems to be not available today. Nothing on twitter or elsewhere. Presumably there are no customers left to notice?

Glad my accounts are nearly closed but they even messed that up! Has to tell them same instructions three times to get my accounts closed. Gone to Monzo and it’s like a breath of fresh air! Got tired with the ongoing issues of blocking my credit card due to ‘fraud’ - I travel extensively and they didn’t seem to like that! With Monzo you just authorise stuff through their app, easy peasy.

Smile, please don’t bother with the crappy PR type response to reviews. DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR SYSTEMS!!!! Your app is out of the ark!

Been a customer for 20 years and they have all of a sudden stopped me from transferring any money out of my account to anywhere, they have blocked my credit card transactions and I have never had any bad credit with them ever.

This has got to be literally the worst customer service I have every received in my life.

Smile used to be good, even great back in 2000.

Now they block existing / reused transactions too. I spent 5 to 6hrs over 4 days trying to get legitimate payments released.

This includes payments which which were authorised by SMS, but were then still blocked.

On my last call, I was told the wait time was 15 minutes. But I had to wait over 1 hour!

Terrible customer experience.

This bank continues to waste my time with account blockages which occur even when I try to make transfers to known transfer recipients. This is in large contrast to modern banks with more sophisticated security software/checks. It is so systematic that I assume that the hedge fund that owns this bank has not invested in modern checks. Or even more worryingly that they have might have liquidity issues. I have moved bank and I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is.

Had enough! Tried to send a faster payment 2 days ago. It just sits on hold, "Status: Unknown". I sent secure messages asking for update - no response. Spent 65 minutes to get through on phone today. Passed to fraud dept. 20 mins of rude questioning "why was this money paid into your account?" etc. Then line drops. Lines closed at 6pm today. So now I can a) wait until Monday, take time out of work to wait 60 minutes to get through? b) hope that someone replies to my secure messages "within 5 business days" c) hope that like other banks, I might just get a SMS saying you need to contact us (not likely). I see "According to the bank's 2019 accounts, the holding company is owned by hedge funds and other asset management companies" - it shows - they're just squeezing everything. No attempt at customer service.

Been with Smile since 2004 but their service is collapsing. Cards never work online because they always falsely flag for fraud. Two days ago they duplicated my credit card bill payment, and flagged both the genuine payment and the dupe for fraud, but didn't tell me for 24 hours and ignored my messages. I called, but was told there was a 60 minute wait time!

Even their 159 people hung up on me twice before I got through to the one person there who knew what he was doing.

With my backup challenger bank it takes less than 5 minutes to be web chatting to a similarly competent person. Smile say they don't read messages for 5 DAYS!

I certainly don't recommend opening a new account with Smile. However I myself will be allowing them one final chance to be better.

UPDATE: After some confusion, some of which wasn't their fault, they did address this issue, so I'm adding an extra star for engagement.

After nearly 25 years of loyalty to Smile I have now switched banks.When I first joined they were pioneers in the internet banking world and led the way with innovative banking which was a joy to use.The last couple of years through covid times saw a reduction in staffing levels and banking hours and online chat was scrapped so the only alternative to get help is an hour long wait on the phone listening to dreary music.When I was locked out of my online account with no way of viewing it through no fault of my own I had to wait for IT dept to fix it..took 7 days.That was the last straw that and having to speak to the fraud dept when genuine transactions get blocked..security gone daft it seems.Life is too short to spend it on the phone to Smile every week.My new bank works brilliantly just like Smile used to.

Leaving after 20 years was good at first now a shambles took 48 hours to send a fast payment and cost me £40 and nearly left me with no travel money

Just started leaving process and could not have cared less

With held 2 payments without alerting us. Almost impossible to make contact with them. A hour later and random questions and 7 hours later payments not released and new vehicle not collected from dealer and day off wasted. Account will be closed today once payment clears. The worst and least effective bank we have had. Nothing to smile about here!

Additional information provided as requested, bar account number.

This bank is the worse! Been on hold an hour and 20 mins already and still in a queue. No other way of doing anything or talking to anyone as they don’t reply to messages for ages.
Tried to make a payment for a holiday and they blocked it, even with secure extra information. They make everything hard work! I am closing my account asap, I do not have time to waste trying to sort out problems caused by them.

35 minutes on hold to Customer Services!!! And still no connection to an adviser. No LiveChat facility either. Abysmal

The Smile Credit card is barely useable for online transactions. My credit card locks on a weekly basis for reasons that defy logic. I have updated my secured by Visa password and ensured my details are accurate but the card fails to work.

This means I must endure painful, costly 30 minute phone calls to unblock my card!

I am now closing my Smile account.

Painful. Smile used to be easy to contact by phone. Not so anymore.

The App on my phone tonight told me I had to update it. I did. Only for the updated App refusing to open. I now cannot access my account on my phone. What is going on...