Natwest have been good to me. Though a friend of mine had some transactions cancelled. He bought 3 games on amazon, but in 3 separate orders a few minutes apart. They were only a few quid each. And they rang him to say that his card had been temporarily blocked. He was livid, but I thought that it was quite good from an outsiders point of view, I hear that is what fraudsters do, test the water with a few low cost purchases to see if the card holder notices and then they go nuts or whatever. But obviously from his point of view it was bloody annoying
HSBC Offshore, cant fault them. Ive always had a nice phone call if they think that what im buying is fraud. Simple "no, please allow it through" does the trick. I have a HSBC UK account, and i have more "trouble" with them (aka, next to zero) wondering when im going to return to the UK again. Nothing wrong with an indian call center to be honest, always found them professional but then i also get moved to a singapore or UK center depending on the time i call the special number. I wouldnt mind an intergrated web interface for both accounts but ill get that once i hit premier status (HA! more like IF ). In Summery..... - get yourself an offshore account. OH and my Debit Card is a VISA. Confuses the hell out of HSBC staff as apparently they dont "deal" with VISA, or at least they didnt till i got a new VISA debit for my UK account (Mistro... where are you now!!? )
I've also been very pleased with Natwest - if you have a problem you get to speak to someone in the UK rather than someone in a call-centre on the other side of the world who can't grasp what you're trying to say.
HSBC have always been top notch for me, never had a problem with personal or business banking Ebuyer, thats a different story, bas***ds
I've run my computer without a firewall or (regular) antivirus for the last 4 years without a problem. I don't even have a fully updated windows. Just don't visit dodgy sites or use dodgy programs and you'll be OK. Same goes for card details; I use paypal where possible and never pay by card in shops (unless it's a reputable company). Don't like being phoned up by a random bloke in Bangladesh asking me for my account info. before he can tell me why he's calling, nor do I like having to call an 0845 number (I don't have a landline, only a mobile) and sit on hold for half an hour to speak to a human. Fraud cancelling is great for those unable to keep their finances in check, but since I always know how much is going in and how much is going out, this sort of kneejerk cancelling just gets on my tits.
I've never had any problems with HSBC when I've got stuff offline. Then again, its normally been from amazon,game or scan etc. Hopefully that will never happen to me, but if it does, you can bet it will be from something stupid. Sods law and all that.
Can I recommend www.smile.co.uk? Backed by the co-operative bank. I've been with them over 10 years. You do the majority of your business on line as you would expect. However, if you do need to phone them dial 0870 THEBANK. How easy is that? Excellent customer service. The only problem I ever had was I was unaware of a visa charge for using your debit card to order currency. Called them up, and they refunded the £7.50 no hassle.
+1 Seriously Santander suck, both here in the UK and in their home country, Spain. We've had such bad experiences that you could not make up even if you tried. Avoid! (it's such a pity that Alliance+Leicester are part of them now )
+1 again... just moved everything away form them this week - bar savings which I haven't been able to access up till now because it's an e-saver, but when they link it to my online banking it stops my debit card on my current account working... figure that one out...
I had a similar experience with Barclays last month. They froze my debit card because of 'suspicious' activity. I had bought a book on Amazon and a game on Steam within 10 minutes of each other. This was the forth time it happened for exactly the same reason and they hadn't told me. So I had 30p in my pocket after a long bad day at work I was feeling slightly more cranky than usual. I ended up calling Barclays complaint line and ranting for a go 5 minutes. It took a further 15 minutes on the phone to sort it out. The only good thing about it because I was obviously so angry the bloke put £10 quid in my account for the cost of the phone call.
