Some reasons why Bank of Ireland is a terrible bank for retailers

In our blog posts we generally stick to garden-related topics and we also like to 'accentuate the positive'. In some cases though, it's hard to be positive; so this post serves the dual purpose of being a word-of-warning to others and a release of frustration for the writer. Having been with Bank of Ireland as business customers for more than ten years, here are some insights that may help to deter any potential new customers. Incidentally, our frustration has nothing to do with any financial difficulties with them; we have never looked for loans or credit; it is to do with their service - or lack of it in our case. Bank Of Ireland has become unviable for our business and we have recently gone through the tedious process of moving our account to a better bank.

1. They have a business website (www.boi-bol.com) that is more complicated, archaic, frustrating and downright awful than you could wish on your worst enemy. It works only with Internet Explorer and is not compatible with Apple.
2. Using this website is mind-bogglingly slow and time consuming. In some case you have to wait for call-backs from them (9.00-5.00 only) to perform simple tasks.
3. If you need help on their website (which you cannot but need) you will waste endless hours of your life waiting for service.
4. Their branches are so chronically under-staffed that you can wait up to 45 mins for services that require a human to help you - there are still instances where even a technically competent, machine-using person requires services that go beyond balance-checking, lodging and withdrawal. In DunLaoghaire recenly, a 45 minute queue was served by one cashier. All machines were out of service, no customer service came to assist and the manager didn't answer her phone nor return voice messages.
5. Their cash lodgement machines are frequently, if not regularly out of service. This being the case, you will waste many hours queueing to lodge cash at the sole cashier's desk that is open. Addled staff have openly told me that the machines are awful and were got 'on the cheap'. One machine recently swallowed my card (Stephen's Green branch) half way through a lodgement, leaving a whole string of customers trying to recall what they had lodged as this had been going on all morning. I had to grab a man in a suit coming out of a door to the rear of the bank; he was the only bank official in sight.
6. When the cash lodgement machines are in service they are maddeningly sensitive, so that evern with well organised and tidied notes it can take ages to complete a lodgement.
7. Business desks are closed in most branches; business customers cannot lodge cash with cashiers, but only with machines; the machines are broken; you are left with no way of ladging cash. This makes it almost impossible to get your hands on coins.
8. Their fees are incredibly high and you also have to pay €15.00 for the use of their business website.
9. The only time the bank appears efficient is when they get hold of you and try to sell you products such as pensions. At this point you are treated royally and made to feel special; sadly this is just a sales pitch.
10. For anyone who wants a good blow-by-blow description of using their website, below is an example taken from boards.ie: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056930294

" BOI's Business On Line is incredible. Absolutely horrible from a design and usability point of view, and is probably the most frustrating online app I've used, ever.

If you want to make an online transfer, you need to setup your user and authorise them for payments. To do that you create a digital certificate. But wait, there's more... (that should be the BOL tagline)... BOI need to call you on the phone to activate the digital certificate first. And they only do this during office hours. And when they ring you, they do so from a private number, so if you miss the call, well tough luck. And then when you call their BOL support number, after waiting the obligatory 15 minutes on hold, they can't actually handle this request, they need to email the digital cert department to call you back instead - no transfer possible. In fairness, they were quick - they got back to me within 10 minutes after I called support. (I only needed to wait another 7 minutes before the cert was ready.)

But before all that remember setting up the user? Well in order to do that you had to setup a new user group before you setup a user, and assign that. Then log in as the user, and activate the account that you want to use. Before doing that, you needed to authorise the setup of a user group in the audit trail, and then create a user and assign to the user group. Then authorise that. Starting from scratch, doing a simple transfer is hours of work for someone technically competent if they do it outside working hours (surely online banking should be used during office hours!) and I suspect using this service is a nightmare for anyone even mildly technophobic.

After some time you'll find that your digital certificate password needs to be changed. You find this out while you're trying to make a transfer. "No problem," you say, "I'll change it". But wait, there's more! You get a prompt where it has 3 input text boxes labeled "User I.D.:", "Digital Cert password:" and "Confirm Password:". Under "User I.D.:" you can see the bottom 2-3 pixels of some text that's been overwritten by the "User I.D.:" text, and you can't read it. All 3 input text boxes are password entry (the text entered appears as asterixes).

You want to make an international bank transfer to a supplier in the UK. No problem! Go to Payments -> Cross Border -> Third Party Payments. Ok!

Select the a/c from which payments will be made - got it.

Do I wish to include Spot/Forward Contract Details? Errr, what? Let's pick No. Ok - that works.
Select Destination Country - No problem, "G.B.\N.I." looks like the right one.
Select Payment currency - Sterling Pounds - OK
Input Payment amount. 1...0... Oh wait, I needed to pay in Euros. How do I change that? I don't. I reset the whole form.
>angry user<

Copy and paste the long IBAN number in? No chance. You gotta type that mother right in there by yourself.

In fairness to them, it is quite a powerful system with a great audit trail and very granular permissions, once you get past the UI created by four blind ex-IBM 360 assembly programmers who died in 1971. But looking past that UI it is overkill for most small business's needs.

Pay €15/month for it? No chance. I'll be moving the business to a new bank before I'll do that. Which is probably easier than setting up a standing order.

Overkill in terms of features I don't have a problem with, as long as the system is usable for the smaller set that I need. Unfortunately it's a design nightmare, and the work flow to accomplish common, simple tasks is long and tortuous. Not good enough."