Black horse down: UK banking giant Lloyds suffers an online wobble UK retail banking giant Lloyds Banking Group's online services have rung in June with a wobble. Problems appear to have started at around 11:30am UK time when customers seeking an online experience found themselves rudely ejected from the bank's web orifice with that classic: "We are sorry an error has occurred, please try …
I've seen that a lot of it is literally purchased from the US. Not got privy information, but when I mentioned the new shiny computers and screens must be fantastic at a certain bank, the teller jokingly said "nah it's all in dollars". Then rotated their screen to show the (no private information) screen still had the dollar signs next to all the currency numbers, as the development team had not changed the symbol over to pounds yet!!!
Wrong question
Unless there's a significant reason not to, go with one that still has a branch available locally. At some point it'll come in useful.
Failing that, go with one that has had massive problems. They'll have lost sufficient business for them to either have fixed things, or at least have a plan in place for when it all falls down again.
The ones with no problems have just got lucky... so far.
(Post is slightly tongue in cheek)
they all have issues, some just have more than others.
HSBC and Barclays have generally been ok, Yorkshire/Clydesdale group (now Virgin Money) are mostly ok, the online challengers are PDG seing as they only have an online/app presence.
on the other end of the scale avoid RBS group like the plague, and Lloyds/HBOS arent far behind.
Banking service providers are required to show customer satisfaction ratings and service availability data on their websites, those that score highest are the ones you want to go for. Hopefully having to show this data focuses their attention a little.
As for me, Nationwide Building Society have a very good and reliable online banking service, in my opinion. But always have another "backup" banking account or payment card, just in case.
Having worked in IT at three huge banks, including Lloyds at one point many years ago, I can confirm that they are all just as bad as each other. Arguably I found Lloyds better to work for than the others. But they are all run in the same way, with similar practices. Lloyds is no better or worse than the others. The problem is that IT knowledge and skills are no longer considered valuable and IT is simply commoditised nowadays. It is known across the industry that quality is going down the toilet but it is cheaper to accept some customer inconvenience than give good service at a higher price.
In fact this seems to be the whole mantra for UK industry, financial or not. Everything is done cheaply and with short term goals.
Hey you kids, get orf mah lawn!!!!!
It's not just the UK. Most US banks are shite as well.
A Duke University survey of Chief Financial Officers found that 78% of them were willing to “give up economic value” and 55% of them would cancel a project with a positive net present value in order to fulfill Wall Street’s desire for “smooth” earnings.
Unfortunately, IT is an easily cut cost to improve quarterly results and customers are too easily placated by PR "apologies".
I always find it 'strange' whenever I go on a forum that has a significant number of folk complaining that <this big company>'s website is down but whenever >this big company> responds it's always with "Only some of our customers were affected".
The cynic in me tends think the rest of the customers either don't have internet or simply hadn't accessed <this big company>'s website anyway.
Certainly the evidence usually suggests it's more than 'some'.
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