Smile UK Reviews 

I have been transferring money from Smile to a higher interest savings account at a different bank over the past week (Smile put a limit on each transfer). Each time I have made a transfer they have sent a text to me to confirm that I want to make this transfer, and I have said yes.

I did my final transfer on Sunday 6th August (4 days ago now), and the destination bank still has not received it. I have not received a text to confirm this transaction as I have every other time. Every day my account shows the transferred amount as going out on whatever the current day is.

I contacted Smile support, who first totally ignored what my question actually was and just said oh yes that is scheduled to go out today.

On my next contact to address this non-response, I have now been told, oh it has been flagged for potential fraud, and if you didn't get a text (I did not) then you should phone x phone number. There is a link in this message so you can see what the phone costs are, but the page it links to does not exist.

So, I had not even been told that my payment was being held pending in the potential fraud process, and even though I have made a series of same amount transfers to the same new banking destination over the past week, I must now speculatively phone a paying phone service to try to get my money transferred.

The casual attitude and lack of information from Smile is appalling, and my money is now stuck in a Smile limbo and I must get myself involved in the chaotic Smile banking process in order to try to get it back.

I have been using a Smile current account for over 20 years now with relatively few issues and have appreciated the online setup. Over the past few months I have had at 3 payments blocked when trying to use my visa debit card for fairly standard payments to recognised organisations. Each time I have had to phone Smile and wait in a telephone queue to get my card unblocked. It seems like Smile have serious issues with how they interact with Visa wich cannot or will not explained to me fully. Customer service is also poor and every time a payment issue occurs I am stuck in a long phone queue and eventually get to speak to someone who does not fully understand the Smile banking system and the reason why a payment is blocked

Wish I’d trusted others’ reviews and saved myself 6 weeks of my time and energy.

Tried to set up an account on the 14th June, and after an initial set of messages to say ‘your account is progressing’, I have since (6 weeks later) been left in limbo with no idea when the account might actually be set up.

Getting in touch with someone to help to is actually not too bad - relatively short waiting times when you call. The professionalism of the staff is pretty good too - but they just don’t seem to know anything, and everything is ‘with another team’ where they can seemingly only send emails to chase them up. Ultimately though the customer (me) was still out the loop to all of this - cue doing this every 10 days with the same rhetoric of ‘the account is with the team and will be completed early next week’. It feels like the good customer service is to cover up a lot of disconnected and archaic processes.

I’ve cancelled the application - and wish I’d never bothered in the first place. Plenty of other banks out there.

Never forget your security questions as the reset ones are ridiculous.
Surely your name, date of birth, sort code and account number, wife’s first two initials who you live with plus pin they send to your phone is enough. It’s ridiculous. Get one of the other two questions wrong and you are blocked for 24 hours.

Fake Website. It has been stealing people’s data.

I cannot access my latest visa statement. This is ridiculous. Obviously you will be taking money out of my account today the bill but it cannot be itemised or reconciled. Massive potential for fraud. Where is the backup plan?

The Bank that wants their customers to cry. Since the new design, the credit card system is a total mess. Instead of transactions in easy to read columns, there is great big writing, and the CSV's have no money value showing. Today, there is now a network problem.
Before these aliens took over, it was not a problem, but now they have gone from bad to worse. I even tried to transfer money to my card account, but it was rejected 3 times, and I gave up.

Applied for a current account and still waiting for my enrolment number have had emails to say click on this link to access account details but I need the enrolment number !

Updated following response from smile, the design may have been informed by the wrong customers, but the delivered website seems not to have been tested with informed testing. I still have no access to my statements to check for fraudulent transactions. As for using totally insecure social media messaging to discuss my accounts, NO. My account is private and you are not treating me, and the many others effected with respect. You should waive credit card repayments until you sort out this uniformed mess.

Updated website is terrible, I have not been able to access my credit card statement when I am concerned there may be fraudulent transactions. A business week has passed and all I have had is " there are problems with the redesigned website which will be resolved soon. Unacceptable I would have got sacked for not testing a new website actually worked. Done on the cheap, one result, I am moving, hope I am not a fraud victim as that would lead to litigation. I have been with you from the begining, not for much longer. Tell your customers you have messed up. Restore the previous web site!

I have been with smile for 20 years + but will definitely switching. Customer service is terrible tried to query a pending transaction,call centre couldn't even tell me what it was for couldn't even look at my statement details fully as he was a coop advisor and smile don't even have a call centre

Tried to open a current account, was refused and the reason they used was my experian credit rating. Went to have a look and it's score was 967 out of 999 apparently excellent!
Fed up with difficulties with triodos and wanted to try another bank. According to trustpilot looks like their service is worse than triodos. No smiles here!

Have been banking wih them since 1999 and they have not let me down once! =)

Why update the website to make it non-functional? I got a message 5 days ago that my latetst credit card statement was ready . I log on, I get sent a 6 digit secure code, this gets accepted then . . . . zilch. Tried every day this week. Just the total amount and due date. No transactions visible for me to check and when I click on the "view last 6 statements" I get a big red cross and "oops, something went wrong" message. A CSV download just gives me the cashback figure on a spreadsheet. About as much use as a chocolate fireguard! I have always downloaded my statments and stored 12 months worth as PDF files in case I need to check back anything. Now I cannot even get sight of the most recent transactions. I have sent a secure message but that is like waiting for the cows to come home. Been with smile almost from the start and never had any real problems. But enough is enough. For now I will no longer use my smile c/cd and if they don't fix this will reluctantly move my current account and savings elsewhere as it seems they do not want customers.
UPDATE After to-ing and fro-ing with "customer service" (oxymoron?) I am getting nowhere. It appears to be all MY fault as I am told to use a different browser, clear cookies, give all the details of my device, network provider, browser version - everything but my shoe size. Sorry smile - you moved the goalposts, not me. This is YOUR problem and you don't pay me to solve it. Customer service have no idea that responses on here indicate there is a KNOWN problem and seem to imply I am doing something wrong. Off to move to another bank.
FURTHER UPDATE - 2 weeks on and I still cannot see my credit card transactions or statement. I have been checking it every day in case of any fraudulent activity, but now I totted up the receipts I had and got the amount smile said I owed on the summary. So I have paid it off early and told them to close my credit card and savings account and have set up to switch current A/c to another bank. Latest message I received told me in no uncertain terms I had no cause for complaint about the update to the website. I hope customers are leaving in droves! They said the updates were sanctioned by customer consultation and feedback. Despite being with them over 20 years they never asked me!
WHAT A SHAMBLES! My savings & credit card accounts have finally been closed & my current account is being switched to my new bank. smile have wiped all the message exchanges - perhaps thinking I was going to make an official complaint. Of course I had already kept copies of everything so they have further wrong footed themselves! 18 (& counting) days of no access to card transactions is appalling. Feels good to be out of there & hope prospective new customers do their research on sites like this.

COUNTING THE DAYS to my escape, but you couldn't make it up . . . . . .
I keep getting emails telling me there is a secure message waiting. I log on and there is nothing there. So I sent another message asking what is going on. This is the reply

"The recent secure messages have been sent to confirm the closures of your credit card & savings account with us. Once the account has been fully closed these messages will no longer show
within your online banking, due to the account being removed from view".
UTTER INCOMPETENCE!!!

Huge minus for updated website. It has always been a battle to produce anything like a reasonable printable/downloadable statement for my credit card account. With the new system it is now impossible. All that is offered is a .csv download. No Print button - such a basic requirement how could you miss it??? Downloadable pdf statements are provided for current and savings accounts - why not credit cards account? Do you think customers don't want a proper record of their credit card transactions? Switch to a new banking provider is looking necessary.

I regularly transfer money from my various brokerage accounts to Smile. Recently, they have refused a £20,000 payment, which was sent back to my brokers after being missing for a week.
No idea why. The same account I have used for 10 previous transfers. Unfortunately, this time I needed the money to pay for building work; fortunately my builders have been understanding, but if a bank won't let you pay money in, it's useless.

This is no longer an internet bank, it is now a telephone bank. Every transaction is blocked, pending checks, even to recipients which are long established in my payee list. It is clear what has happened here: the security protocol has not been developed to cope with potential fraud risk so their answer is to force a telephone call and resultant interview every time I want to transfer my kid his pocket money or to pay the cleaning lady. It was decent while it lasted, but now smile.co.uk is a train crash. Moving to Monzo today, following 20 years with Smile.

I have tried to maintain an account with Smile bank, mainly because I have a credit card with them, and I have been with them since they started back in the early 90s. Sadly their website is stuck in the 90s. Recent changes now render it impossible to print a credit card statement. I can only download a csv data file to an excel spreadsheet. The messaging function is tedious and doesn't hold a copy of messages you send, only their responses. I am using them less and less because they are so user unfriendly, compared to other banks, building societies and credit card companies I have accounts with.

Terrible bank whom I have been with for a LONG time (but now switching). Issues :

* customer service - can take an hour to get through to speak to someone
* app is rubbish - you can't send or receive messages on it
* they don't email or write they send important messages you can only read on the website (not the app), they then expect you to randomly log on to their website (which you don't need to do if you use the app) just to see if they happened to have sent you a message
* they withdraw your overdraft with NO NOTICE
* their customer service is non existent
* I have spoken to 5 of their customer service advisors in the last 2 weeks and only one appeared interested in what I was experiencing and tried to help
* Service so poor I have been transfering my money to a Revolute card and using that !

AVOID AVOID AVOID

Online account creation malfunctioned - with no reason why or explanation on how to resolve it. 15 minutes' work wasted. For an 'online-focused bank', that's appalling. Avoid.

Trying to make a simple international transfer for a small amount of money - something I used to do easily online. Waited to go through the twenty alternatives that I didn't want, waited online. Then was transferred to the international department only to have the phone call disconnected. What a useless bank. I've been with them for over twenty years but am definitely looking to move.