Years ago when I came to the UK to do my BSc degree and Bulgaria was not yet a member of the EU it was a major pain to open a UK bank account. I talked to staff from Barclays, HSBC and NatWest. From all those 3 major banks only NatWest had reasonable conditions all the others had crazy stuff like depositing a lot of money and not being able to use them for 2 years or so. Today that’s no longer the case.

I’ve had good customer experience and they’ve always been polite and done what I’ve requested without wasting my time. E.g changing all my addresses (including Credit Card’s) they did in 5 minutes.

1. Bad things started happen about an year, year and a half ago about the time when Firefox 3.0 was released. Their ugly online banking system even today doesn’t support Firefox 3.0+. So my only choice was to use Opera on Linux.

2. One of my debit cards expired last month and I didn’t get a replacement at all. I had to waste time contacting the bank only to be told that if I haven’t received the card then it’s was sent to my old address (changed about one year ago) and that if I have changed my address in the last year they always send the new cards to the old address. WTF?

3. Last  years I switched to online statements. All good and green alright. However this month I badly needed official printed statements with my name and address on them as a proof of funds for post-study work permit. I went personally to the bank and requested they send me the printed statements. They said “No problem it will take 10 work days max, but usually only takes 2-3 days.“. 15 work days later with the statements not yet arrived I went again to my branch and asked what’s going on. “Sir, there is no record that you have requested the statements.” WHAT? And apparently it turns out there isn’t a single document they can provide me with that has my name and address on it. E.g. they can print my transaction history but it doesn’t have those details so it can’t be used as an official document. I needed those statements for next week god damn it. Requested them again and surprise surprise after 15 days I still haven’t received my statements and even if I do it’s already too late.

Screw you NatWest! I am switching banks the moment I get some free time…