Co-operative Bank For 1 to 9 Employees

The below comments were given by respondents who gave the bank a medium overall score (see glossary for more details).

• "Very hands off and never had any issues." Southern England; Construction
• "It does what I need it to and it's free." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "[An] excellent local service provided by helpful and knowledgeable staff." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "It's adequate." Southern England; Other Service Activities
• "I think they do the job." Wales; Accommodation and Food Service Activities
• "It suits our needs. That's it." Northern England; Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
• "No problems." Scotland; Construction
• "They're quite good. They sort things straight away. If we have a problem, they deal with it and they're fairly amenable." Northern England; Construction
• "Satisfactory in regards to customer service, and they provide free banking." Northern England; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "[It's] okay. [I'm] satisfied with the products provided by the Co-operative Bank." Southern England; Construction
• "It's adequate. That's it." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "It's okay, [I've] never had a problem." Northern England; Real Estate Activities
• "Adequate, but a bit slow." Northern England; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "[I] haven't had any problems." Southern England; Education
• "It's very good. Mainly because it's free banking." Southern England; Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
• "They are competent." Southern England; Accommodation and Food Service Activities
• "They're very supportive." Southern England; Information and Communication
• "I feel this bank only does the bare minimum." Northern England; Information and Communication
• "No real issues. Really quick to answer phone which is main thing. No online problems. Fair. Is satisfied." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "I use online which is adequate. It is just okay. It's not as good as some other online services." Southern England; Information and Communication
• "The Co-op bank is reasonably adequate in terms of the banking services they provide." Northern England; Construction
• "It's a basic service provided at a reasonable price. No complaints there, but the website is a bit bare and unfriendly." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Customer service is good and kept to a high standard, but the online however is very clunky, slow and unresponsive, and when you are working in a business this costs money, especially with transaction services. Knowing my personal account is faster is also a bit annoying. The bank also lacking an app makes it feel very dated." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "It would be very nice if there was a branch locally." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They do what you ask. Nothing special. Average." Southern England; Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
• "Great with customers, and they are very easy to contact. However, I was disappointed by the way they handled my request for a business loan." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Paying in is a little more tricky, but it is a free bank, therefore cost effective." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "The business is a business. It is fine, but there is no service in the weekends and bank holidays, which is a downfall. Also, all the negative information in the press. We were concerned about our money." Southern England; Education
• "They are adequate." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Very good value. As I am a part of the Federation of Small Businesses, I get free banking. Their walk-in service is very good. Their online service is not very good." Southern England; Accommodation and Food Service Activities
• "They are very good, up to date." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Good service and no fees. Good telephone banking. Efficient." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "I put up with it because I get free banking." Southern England; Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
• "Reliable. Convenient. Never had any issue with them." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are trying to rectify themselves. Service is a little bit slow." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "The service they provide has been adequate for my requirement. My service has always been polite and efficient." Northern England; Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
• "I do not really get any service from the Co-op. I appreciate the free banking." Southern England; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "Mostly do what you ask of them. Internet service is fine." Scotland; Information and Communication
• "It's always reliable, always there when I need them, and with the FSB it's really cheap. It's actually free, I think." Northern England; Administrative and Support Service Activities
• "[The] straightforward in-and-out banking is good. For any other service [it is] like pulling teeth." Northern England; Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
• "It does the job. It does what I need it to do." Northern England; Information and Communication
• "They just do their stuff. The only downside is that there are no foreign transactions online." Southern England; Manufacturing
• "They are ethical and fair." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "I'd say it does what it does." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "[It is] good. The service is good. In terms [of] transactions at the bank it is quite quick." Southern England; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "The account is easy to use once you've got it set up. It's the setting up that is the difficult part. It's not so easy trying to talk to them by ringing them up though. You have to go through such a rigmarole. I'm not sure if they have a British call centre, and I am against that if they're not." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are very good in general. Disappointed in recent ethics failings. Internet banking is easy to do." Northern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "No thrills bank. That's what we want." Northern England; Other Service Activities
• "Reasonable value for money. The charges are just reasonable. It does not handle cash too well, because it has quite high charges with administering cash. There is nothing else really, because we haven't got an overdraft, we don't have to deal with them too much." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are quite efficient, easy to get hold of, easy to deal with, and they don't charge us excessively. It was a nightmare to set up the account at first place, but now it is set it is quite straightforward. We didn't try to get any extra services, we use only simple business banking services, so we don't have special reasons to be disappointed." Southern England; Construction
• "The branch is always very helpful. The online system is archaic. The layout is visually quite boxy. [There are] no international options, and when I want to log on I need a calculator and fob style log on, which means I need to keep it on me all the time. I have to go through a whole rigmarole." N Ireland; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "[They are] low-charging but not proactive." Southern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "It's not got a very good internet banking. Otherwise, fairly cheap transactional charges. It's a basic account." Southern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "Simple, basic and slightly inefficient." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "They give a very good service, and if you ring them up you do not hang around waiting, and you get someone who speaks English." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "I don't really know. They seem to be okay. They're nothing special. I don't have much to do with them because they don't have a business manager." Northern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "Free and adequate. Their online banking is archaic. Their branch locations are a nightmare, but it's free and adequate for our purpose." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "It's free banking, which is beneficial to a small business, but the website is not intuitive for online banking, as the website is complicated to navigate around compared to my personal account with online banking. I've had to call them for the simplest of operations. It's very clunky to be honest." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "In terms of customer support they are awful. In terms of banking services, however, they're okay." Southern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "Satisfied. Sometimes you have to be on the phone for a long time." Southern England; Other Service Activities
• "Easy to use, but better web interface needed. All information can't be seen on screen." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "We have been very happy for [x] years with the Cooperative Bank. They then said that they wanted a further full evaluation on the property, which will cost us in the region of £[x]. As the previous full evaluation was 2 years ago, we feel that this is very excessive, and we are currently on dispute on this point. The matter has now been referred on to a financial matter. Other than that, we're happy with the service that we get." Southern England; Human Health and Social Work Activities
• "I got reduced banking fees as a member of FSB and have a branch across the road, which is handy when I need to discuss anything." Northern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are free, so that's good. The online interface is awful, and there's not many branches." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Their online banking is very clunky, and very difficult to figure out. On the positive, there is a free service for FSB members, so there are no charges." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Well, my needs aren't very complicated, so they fulfil my needs." Wales; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "It's fine. I can do it in a local Post Office, and it's just easy." Wales; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are very good, efficient, and easy to use, and as they are our personal bank, this makes things easy." Southern England; Mining & quarrying: Electricity, Gas and Air Conditioning Supply, Sewerage & Waste Management
• "Professional and provides the service I need." Southern England; Information and Communication
• "I think that what they provide is really what I need. I don't have any need for any additional service. I couldn't say the bank would be great for lending. For my purposes, just as a business current account, it's fine. The branch is the only thing that lets it down as there isn't one." Southern England; Construction
• "Through the FSB I get free banking, so would recommend for same thing." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are there if I need them. I was attracted to them due to their ethical policy." Southern England; Education
• "Again, we don't interact with them a great deal. Their website could be improved, and it's not like the old days where an account manager would come round." Southern England; Transportation and storage
• "The service is good for Internet use, but there are no local branches for paying in cheques and cash, which restricts my use of this bank." Northern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "Internet banking is very basic, but more efficient than the Bank of Scotland's. If I need to pay invoices, I want to be able to post-date payments for 2 months. This is not possible with Bank of Scotland. They wanted me to pay more for an upgraded package to let me do what I need, whereas Co-op allows me to do thing like that as standard, even though the service is less complex." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They meet our requirements at a very low cost." Scotland; Information and Communication
• "The lower rates and free banking are good." Northern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "Average service." N Ireland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "It's appropriate for our business." Northern England; Manufacturing
• "Functional and cheap. We don't use them for anything, but there are no charges." Southern England; Information and Communication
• "It's personal. It's intelligent, and it's prompt." Southern England; Other Service Activities
• "It's fine." Scotland; Other Service Activities
• "Not accessible from where we are based in Glasgow. We do not have any dealings with them as in a person to person [on a] day-to-day basis." Scotland; Construction
• "The Co-op Bank is operated by the local Post Office, so access is very good." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They are fair banking. They are ethical." Scotland; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles

The below comments were given by respondents who gave the bank a low overall score (see glossary for more details).

• "It's not especially sophisticated." Southern England; Real Estate Activities
• "Mediocre, that's all I can say." Northern England; Manufacturing
• "Good service, although they are in financial difficulties right now, so [name] would not recommend it." Northern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "Functionally good, but due to their problems they are reducing overdraft limit." Southern England; Education
• "They are terrible." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "They provide a terrible online and phone service. Their online and smartphone setup works poorly. It is timeous and mostly unhelpful to get through on the phone." Southern England; Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
• "They are Mickey Mouse. The Internet banking is shocking. You can't read the design of the website. You can't expand windows on the website, and can only see 3 transactions at a time, unless you print. You have to scroll up and down. It's frustrating." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "Well, it's a bank. It does banking. The online banking is shocking. The amount of time I spend doing it online, I want a good facility." Southern England; Construction
• "I don't think they're very commercially-oriented. [They] don't know what the requirements of the customers are, [they are] out of touch." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "For processing cheques, they give a good service for cheap. Managing transfers to another bank, they're disgraceful and incompetent." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "The Co-op's service level is very good. What they haven't got is enough branches. Banks, on the other hand, are absolutely abysmal. They are the only business that can make a loss and the tax payer has to bail them out. The Co-op as a bank has been okay." Southern England; Financial and Insurance Activities
• "Very poor." Northern England; Other Service Activities
• "I use online services to do all my banking. We need a pot for everything to go in to. I think it's pretty appalling, as it's the only side of things I see with the Co-op. Half the time the website won't work if you use Google Chrome." Northern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities
• "They're friendly, and you can get them on the end of the phone which is great, but they make rather a lot of mistakes." Southern England; Wholesale and retail trade, Repair of motor vehicles or motorcycles
• "It's not straight forward. It's slightly complicated to use. They don't have many branches, and quite often it's quite difficult to get payments made in to the account. If people want to do bank transfers. What I do really like about the Co-op was the ethical stands. That's the reason why I would want to bank with the Co-op, because of their ethical stands." Northern England; Manufacturing
• "I am not very happy. They were the sort of bank that took the moral high ground, with really sound ethics that has been wobbly in the last year. Also their website is below par." Wales; Manufacturing
• "Historically good. Currently poor." Southern England; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities