Bankwest Avis 

Your banking system is most terrible, meaningless system I have ever met. You don't care about your customers, irresponsible, un responsive and your services are awful, your staffs are rude and uncaring.

In week 13 of lockdown in Sydney, my small business has been affected and I’m having to pivot left and right and change up my business and try and get on top of outgoings, while also innovating everything to be online (I know this is a bulk of businesses). While I do this I have changed the way I’m banking and keeping my money in another account to my main on, so I can pay rent and buy groceries and ensure I can survive, so the money doesn’t get taken up unexpectedly by auto-debits. (Yes time are that tough.) BANKWEST HOWEVER TAKES $10 EVERY TIME THE ACCOUNT GOES INTO MINUS ***EVEN IF IT IS FOR 1hr***

THEN THE ACCOUNT DOES GO INTO OVERDRAFT I RECTIFY IT WITH SOMETIMES 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 hours THE SAME DAY AND SOMETIMES A FEW VERY VERY SHORT HOURS. THIS DOESNT MATTER. BankWest happily admit the $10 fee is by an automated computer and happens immediately. ZERO UNDERSTANDING FOR CASE TO CASE DETAILS, ZERO UNDERSTANDING FOR PANDEMICS AND THE IMPACT ON THEIR CLIENTS AND SMALL BUSINESSES THAT NEED HELP RIGHT NOW. ZERO UNDERSTANDING OF GREY AREAS.

I have banked with BankWest since 2009, now 2021 - 12 years and they don’t care, they keep taking these $10 fees out. It’s daylight robbery. It’s not a small fee. And 99% of time I rectify the account very quickly.

GET THIS TOO: BankWest send a text message saying “we’re trying to debit from your account please deposit money by x time, so we can process the payment.” I HAVE DEPOSITED THE MONEY EVERY TIME, ON TIME AND YET I STILL GET THE FEE EVERY TIME.

******If you can automate a text message and the processing of payments by a certain time than you can change the time that a dishonour fee comes out giving people a grace period until that time. YOU CHOSE NOT TO. YOU CHOSE TO TAKE THE FEE FROM LOYAL CLIENTS IMMEDIATELY. IT IS A CHOICE!!!!!!!! I’m not suggesting that there should be no dishonour fee. I understand if people do the wrong thing there needs to be a charge. But the system FUNDAMENTALLY DOESN’T WORK RIGHT NOW AND YOU DONT CARE TO CHANGE IT!!!! If you give me a time via text to get the money in and I do get the money in by that time than there should no be a fee involved because I’ve done what you want and need.

YOU ARE LOOSING A VERY LOYAL CLIENT OF 12 years, with three accounts with BankWest because IVE HAD ENOUGH.

You don’t care and you don’t see any humanness or grey area to help your clients. You have automated computers and book of rules running the show, which shows you’re a company with no heart.

Enough is enough. Taking my business elsewhere.

Refuse for you to access your own money if you try to transfer out more than $20k within a month.
App/online banking experience is terrible.

BankWest's More Rewards Programme (MRP) is a rip-off as it is a lot cheaper to buy merchandise elsewhere.
Examples:

(a) The Breville Bread Maker retails at $179.95 but the MRP charges 26,670 points + $248.92 or 88,900 points, this makes the item far more expensive.

(b) Samsung Sound Bar HWE450 retails at $349.00 but the MRP charges 50,8250 points + $474.32 or 169,400 points.
Basically, the MRP is not worth a pinch of goat's manure and one is better off buying its merchandise at discount stores and using a better credit card with a decent rewards programme.

This was the worst customer experience I’ve ever received in my life. Like someone said before “if you care about your mental health do not come to Bankwest”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I applied for a home loan with Bankwest and they rejected it. The guy that was handling our application name Le-on lim was terrible!!! When I first went to meet him he provided us with information we gave him all our details and lodge the application. The application took a long time. Le-on was near impossible to get a hold of. He was always busy and never picked up his phone. They only way to reach him is if he reached out to you and wanted a document. He never gave us updates on our application I was the one always calling Bankwest and finding out updates about our application. The night before the application was due he sent us an email! He didn’t even have the decency to call to say that more documents was needed....why would you wait to tell us this the night before finance due date???? When the due date came for our finance he said more time was needed....lies! When I called the next business day they told me that the application was denied on finance due date! To make it worst....Le-on went on annual leave without telling us anything on the day our finance was due so we could not get a hold of him. He never communicated to us he was going on annual leave, he never told us our file would be handled by someone else. He just went away our file was handed over to someone and when I called the person to get updates on our application he didn’t even know anything about our application he said to call him back in about 3 hours. So when I did call back he said the application was in fact denied but he couldn’t give me a reason as why the application was denied. No one ever reached out to me to follow up. I’ve gone with commonwealth now best experience ever. STAY AWAY FROM BANKWEST

I've had a Bankwest Zero Platinum MasterCard for quite a few years and have become really frustrated with the way it works when overseas.

I originally got the card mainly because of the no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee. I buy a lot of digital products, software and services online from the US, UK and other European countries. In addition, I travel a lot and so this is an advantage when combined with the no annual fee and complimentary overseas travel insurance.

The one thing that has become a major problem in the last few years is when I have traveled for many months at a time. The inability to set an overseas mobile phone number to receive SMS messages has become a massive pain in the backside and nobody at Bankwest cares.

Not only is SMS insecure (due to the risk of SIM swap attacks), but there is no alternative such as being able to use Authy or similar software-based 2FA codes. It is also not possible to use hardware-based RSA-style tokens either.

When I try to buy things online whilst overseas, I now get SMS messages to authorize transactions. These are useless because I do not use my Australian SIM card when overseas for long durations due to the cost. It costs $5 to roam with Vodafone Australia for one day. That means receiving one SMS is $5 a pop. This is simply not an option. On some occasions, I’ve had to use my card through my PayPal account. But then I get stung with punitive PayPal exchange rates instead of the zero foreign transaction fees on a native credit card transaction.

On top of that, whenever I need to call the bank to resolve or get around this SMS issue, their call centres only operate during Australian business hours. This is not convenient when I am in Europe, where I am currently stuck due to the COVID lockdowns.

The Bankwest Zero Platinum MasterCard is an international credit card that requires the cardholder to teleport to Australia in order to buy things online, or to resolve a customer service issue where things cannot be dealt with using Secure Messaging.

Bankwest never offer to call me on my temporary overseas mobile number during UK hours and nor do they offer any solutions to the SMS problem.

After complaining to them about this issue for years, I finally made the decision to write about these problems here in case anyone at Bankwest is listening.

After reading all these negative reviews I don’t understand where they are coming from, my experience has been amazing.

My experience has always been a genuinely positive one with Bankwest. I’ve been with Bankwest for 6 years now and even During the COVID19 pandemic they gave me a call just to check in (I only had my $1,000 credit card with nothing owing on it) which I thought was great customer service.

The products they offer are reasonably priced (percentage) and from my experience they are always open to have a chat about interest rates if your looking for a better deal.

The ability to sign documents using the secure bank mail feature on their internet banking is amazing for someone like myself who resides in Melbourne. As i mentioned before some of these negative reviews I don’t believe, please do your research before taking what is said as gospel, this really is an amazing friendly bank that provides a five star service.