Customers let down by the biggest names on the high street

The "big four" high-street banks are trailing their internet and telephone rivals in terms of customer satisfaction, the consumer body Which? has claimed.

Five of the seven "best buy" accounts it identified were internet and phone deals, with online bank Smile topping the poll for customer satisfaction.

Which? said the "big four" banks - Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and NatWest - each scored just two out of five for satisfaction, and none qualified for its "best buy" table of current accounts. Some big banks pay interest on current accounts at just 0.1 per cent.

But despite the low levels of customer satisfaction, nearly two- thirds of people questioned for Which?'s survey still banked with the big four.

Which? spokesman Martyn Hocking urged people to take action. "Switching to a better bank account is straightforward," he said. "Internet and telephone banks seem to treat customers better, and you can get much higher interest too."

In a separate study, Which? found a "huge gap" between advertised broadband download speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve. Packages promising speeds of up to eight megabits per second (Mbps) in fact achieved an average speed of 2.7Mbps.

Which? wants the regulator, Ofcom, and Trading Standards to investigate.

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