Sainsburys Bank plc > Reviews > They should stick to groceries....

Author's product rating:   

Staff courtesy	Average
Promptness of service	Poor
Efficiency of service	Average
Competitiveness of charges/rates	Average

Advantages:	Good brand name
Disadvantages:	Poor service, difficult to operate on line

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Sainsburys is a long established grocer, now one of the leading supermarket chains which like Tesco and others has extended into financial services. When I recently needed some house and contents insurance I was happy to accept their quote which appeared to offer better services for a lower price. This led me into thinking their credit card and banking might be equally satisfactory, but sadly this has not been so and I have left both services. Why?

For a start they are both so hedged about with security checks (as has been commented on in other reviews) that they are difficult to operate. You need not only a password and account number, but also a singer, a date, a place and a name. Security is vital, but to me this is really over the top: it's difficult to remember all these items, so you need to write them down which tends to defeat their purpose.

When operating the savings account, you have to go to several pages specifying what you want to do, the account details, how much money etc. But you get asked for security information at each page, so you may have to enter some of the security stuff three or four times. Very secure, and very inconvenient.

As for the credit card, when I set it up I went through all the security rigmarole again but I never saw anything about how the monthly bill was to be settled (I normally set up an automatic transfer from another account). I used the card a little but the first monthly statement must have got lost in the post as (following a call from Sainsburys) I discovered I was being charged for non-payment and threatened with being black-listed. Being allergic to 0870 numbers I e-mailed them several times and received unhelpful replies after a day or two.

So, all in all, house insurance: maybe; bank account, credit card: no, forget them.