When we announced this site, banks were the most popular subject for inclusion.

Complaining to banks

Credit interest on current accounts

Supposedly there are 80 million current account holders (which seems a bit high) with an average balance around £1,000 - making £80 billion! Most current accounts pay little or no interest.

High street banks' rates have been criticised by the Competition Commission and the Treasury Select Committee. You can find out which current accounts do pay decent interest by looking at websites or checking the weekend papers.

Transferring your bank account

Transferring your account is getting easier. Banks & Building Societies have to provide a list of standing orders and direct debits on request - and some banks, when they receive your account, will even simply set them up for you without you having to do all the paperwork. Halifax and Abbey National do this.

By the end of 2001, standing orders and direct debits should be transferred automatically when you transfer your account. But meanwhile this process can take up a lot of your spare time.

But check that you can get cash out painlessly ...!

Most large banks have agreed to transfer accounts within 10 days. But Intelligent Finance said in January 2001 that they (and other banks) are not meeting this deadline. And Lloyds TSB will be setting up a central switching unit in July 2001 which guarantees to send your account details to the new bank within three working days or pay you £50.

Cash machines

Hurrah! In early July 2000 even Barclays had to abandon its intention to continue charging for withdrawals. Now they say they may scale back their plans to increase the number of cash machines. Evidently this will cost the banking industry £100m a year in lost income. I have not been deluged by sympathy e-mails.

Providers of cash machines who are not banks (like Securicor) will still charge.

Unit trusts

According to the David Aaron Partnership, four out of ten funds run by the high street banks have never been in the top half of the performance figures over one, three and five year periods. But they often have high charges.

An online competitor says, "They've managed to combine top end charges with bottom end performance for years".

An investment adviser adds, "Many [people] will never have invested before and choose to invest with their bank because they don't know what else to do and believe their bank to be trustworthy".