bunq

I got my bunq account about two months ago (despite a warning from a friend that their customer service is terrible). The UX is really confusing (it wasn’t clear if I’d opened an account or not until like a day later). And I thought/assumed in opening an account they’d send me a card, and when I went to the “Help” forum it said that you could expect it to take 3+ weeks to get your card, so I assumed that I would get the card information then. I’m part because it said “to check on a card (or whatever), go to ‘Cards’” and when I did there was no card there but also no option to order one. Well here I am two months later with no card, so I go back into bunq and somehow manage to click on some button that takes me to an “order a card” option (that definitely wasn’t on that screen before), so I guess now I’m going to have to wait another 3 weeks to get my bank card?? And let’s be real: there are still a substantial amount of fees for international transfers (I mean really, there may be countries where you can live on $500 a month but the Netherlands is DEFINITELY not one of them, at least not in Amsterdam. I mean that amount is a gimmick, not a deal.) …but seriously, get better UX (and/or tutorials and/or nurturing sequences).

I can never go back to a traditional bank anymore. It’s way ahead and much more efficient. They do weird things with the app design sometimes. And there’s an overly annoying push to all the tree things, I appreciate it but don’t fill my bank app with it it’s a bank and that should be the main focus first and foremost, but now most of the banking features are in one tab and there’s a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t care about or use that take up 70% of the app. You can easily ignore them but I wish they went back to focusing on being a great bank and to better.

I’ve been using Bunq for a year now and mostly love the service. However, I’m currently locked out of the app and haven’t heard from customer support in 3 days. Every now and then, the Bunq app will force a complete log out and use SMS authentication to allow you back into the app. For me, that SMS never delivers. The problem is, besides their email channel, all customer support flows through the logged in state of the app. Even the “SOS” phone number that was introduced just takes a recording of your issue, and says that you will receive a response in the app. While I was able to get help within a few hours the first time around, I’ve not been locked out of my account for 3 days with no response from customer support. I’m very lucky that I paid my rent the day before this happened. In short, if something goes wrong and you are unable to log in, there is no channel that will quickly put you in touch with a human being to talk to. I’ve also heard that Bunq has a very toxic work environment, so I wouldn’t be surprised if their customer support team is short staffed anyway.