Your analysis mirrors mine - the thing is, I don’t find their phone service is that good. It has the (fairly) unique feature of being ‘straight to a human’ - but that initial human essentially does the job of a phone menu with any other bank, take you through security, tell you about balances/recent transactions, reorder cards etc. Anything remotely complicated (and it would have to be if I’m calling up) and it’s a ‘transfer and wait’ situation.
It’ll be a sad day for me when TSB finally sort this issue…
What’s weird about it is the profile matching worked for the first few years following their IT meltdown. It was never a good experience, but it did work. Then since about 2021 seemingly the only way to get a profile merged is to ring up. I wonder if there was some mishap with the batch process which led to it being switched off or curtailed.
Just to say to @gmlondon I also wasn’t annoyed by your post and have appreciated the discussion. I have called FD enough times over the years that I have become quite comfortable with them for some things. Like the mortgage where I have benefited from excellent rates over the past decade. Some years ago I called on a bank holiday to ask about making a large (>£10k) international payment, got through to them in seconds and they made (or at least initiated) the payment whilst I was on the call. Quick, easy, helpful.
But yes, I would appreciate transaction notifications and maybe some other improvements to the app.
What annoys me most are all the strange limitations which seem to be built around phone-centric processes.
Not being able to open new accounts (for most of their products) without having to use a chatbot, which replicates the phone experience via text. The app throwing a weird error message when trying to alter your regular saver standing order, and you have to call or use chat. Little things like that just show how their attitude to technological improvement isn’t great.
You get the feeling they think all their customers are not tech savvy, and are therefore too stupid be “trusted” with things such as modifying their own standing order. That really puts me off them.
I recently had to contact them over something minor that other banks put on statements. This was about payment details to pay their credit cards using Faster payments. They do not put the details on the statement. I had to wait on chat for someone to tell me to go to set up new Payee, under companies/organisations I search FD. I told them that other banks are straight forward with this, it is on statements with Account number and Sort code, also for some the Payee is automatically added if you bank with them too.
This wasted time that they could use to serve customers with more serious needs.
The payments details are on the back of my First Direct Gold Card statement.
By automatic bill payment.…To arrange an automatic bill payment from an account other than a first direct 1st Account, please quote the account reference 40-42-46 89001646 followed by your 16 digit credit card number.
I admit the wording could be clearer, because the details are the same even if are paying from your First Direct account.
My first direct mortgage can only be paid via faster payment (including SO) - so on the bank I’m paying from it’s not at all obvious that I’m paying a mortgage!
No it’s like sending money to another current account, so I’d be putting my name as the payee. I could risk it and put any payee name down, but probably wouldn’t do that.
The reference itself could factor in a little but from my experience these payments still had to be manually recategorised
My 7% saver account has finally matured, will be glad to ‘hide’ the First Direct app and keep it for paying cash in and as an emergency backup account. Moving to Chase has really made it clear how things have moved on and improved.
