Best and worst banks, supermarkets and mobile phone networks for customer service revealed

A look at the best and worst companies for customer service across the banking, lending, supermarket and mobile phone sectors.

When a business lets you down, and you want to complain, one option is to make use of Resolver.

The free complaints site can help you put together your complaint, and makes it easier to keep track of how things are progressing, or not as the case may be.

Resolver knows better than most just how variable complaints handling can be, depending on the firm you’re raising and issue with, and has now published details on the best ‒ and sadly, the worst ‒ firms at dealing with complaints across four categories so far.

Firms were graded on a range of criteria, including how long it took for issues to be resolved, how commonly issues came up with that firm, how quickly they responded, how easy they were to deal with, and how satisfied the customer was with how the complaint had been resolved.

Let’s take a look at the breakdown, as well as the biggest issues seen in each of these categories over the last year.

Banks

We’ll start with banks, and very specifically with current accounts.

You can’t really get by without one these days, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they ‒ and the banks that provide them ‒ are all the same.

Resolver has overseen more than 12,000 closed cases relating to bank account complaints between June 2020 and May this year, with complaints about fraud ‒ for example, an account being opened in someone’s name without their involvement, or falling victim to a scam ‒ some of the more common.

There was also a notable number of complaints about overdraft issues, including people who were left shocked by sudden hikes to the charges they have to pay for dropping into the red.

However, the most common complaint issue was access to accounts, ranging from things like issues with passwords being recognised to broken banking apps, while there have also been thousands of people who find their accounts frozen, blocked or closed without warning.

Here are the top and bottom five banks based on their overall score:

Bank	Score	Bank	Score
RBS	84	Santander	16
Virgin Money	78	Pockit	25
NatWest	72	TSB	29
Lloyds Bank	66	Nationwide Building Society	40
Halifax	58	Metro Bank	41

It’s worth noting that Santander’s horrific score is courtesy of managing just a one-star rating for its response time and resolution rate. That tells you that dealing with the firm is far from simple.

Now read: the banks we're all ditching and joining

Grocery stores

Our shopping habits have come under serious scrutiny over the last year, courtesy of the pandemic.

There have been issues with people stockpiling for example, while others have preferred to make use of delivery and click and collect services rather than hitting the aisles themselves.

Complaints raised with our supermarkets covered things like compliance with social distancing in store and substitutions with deliveries.

Supermarket	Score	Supermarket	Score
Milk & More	91	Sainsbury’s	20
Costco	89	Ocado	23
Tesco	77	Asda	23
Aldi	69	Co-op	25
Poundland	65	Lidl	32

Clearly, there’s quite a chasm between the top performers and those that have struggled.

Milk & More notched up full marks in six out of the seven measurements, while Costco also only dropped marks in one category.

It’s notable that the bottom three are some of the biggest supermarket chains in the country.

Sainsbury’s, in last place, manage one-star ratings in most measurements, while Ocado ‒ along with Sainsbury’s and Spar ‒ received a one-star score for satisfaction with how the complaint was resolved.

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Mobile providers

Resolver said that complaints to mobile providers over the year were often focused on transaction and payment issues ‒ in the middle part of the year, these accounted for up to a third of the complaints seen every month.

Similarly, there were plenty of billing issues, for example where people are still charged by their old provider despite switching contract. Here’s the breakdown for contract mobile providers.

Provider	Score
BT	86
EE	79
Sky	74
iDMobile	57
O2	57
Tesco Mobile	48
Vodafone	23
Three	18
Virgin Mobile	8

BT managed full marks across almost all categories, only being let down by the time taken to respond to complaints.

EE took second spot, performing well on ease of contract and customer satisfaction, while Sky stood out for resolution times and rates.

At the other end of the table, Virgin scored a frankly pathetic eight. It managed one-star scores in every single category.

Read; best and worst mobile firms based on Ofcom complaints

Credit cards

Finally, Resolver has broken down scores on complaints handling by credit card providers.

Charges, fees and cancellations and sales-related complaints accounted for four out of ten complaints made to credit card firms, while Resolver also noted that average response and resolution times increased as the year went on.

Provider	Score	Provider	Score
Virgin Money	88	M&S Bank	11
Halifax	76	Marbles	19
NatWest	70	Aqua Card	25
Barclaycard	67	Tesco Bank	30
Lloyds Bank	67	Capital One	35

Virgin Money picked up top scores in resolution and response times and was the top performer in categories like ease and satisfaction.

Halifax is also worth a mention, as the only member of the top three to get full marks for its speed at resolving issues.

At the bottom end of the table, M&S scored one out of five in all but one category.

Aqua did slightly better on the ease of complaining but was let down by its average resolution time and how few customers would recommend it to friends and family.