“I was enticed into opening a tide business account on the offer of £75 free, I have recently got into ecommerce so thought this could be a useful account to have.
1 day after opening the account I was sent an email that told me I had 5 days to remove my money from the account as it was being deleted. Colossal waste of my time, all so they dont have to pay out £75, disgraceful. dont use this bank!”
“Absolutley shocking bank.
Lies to you about statements being generated, ineffective and unprofessional customer service, doesn't work with many banks for transfers.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
Literally the worst bank I have ever experienced.
Now delaying my mortgage after being told my statement would be available on 4 different occasions.”
“Opened a new business account a few weeks back, and they temporarily froze my account for no reason whatsoever! Holding all my funds, so I cannot pay my suppliers. They are impossible to speak too. What a mistake choosing this bank. Shocking customer service.”
“Do not Bank with this joke company. As per all the other bad reviews which obviously they either do not learn from what everyone is saying or are just too ignorant to care. They pause your account for no justified reason and then you cannot speak to anyone about it. How the hell are people expected to run a business when these jokers hold on to your money and dont pay your direct debits that your business has set up in order to function. Even when you send them a message through the Tide App you simply get ignored and just get an automated message saying how busy they are. Maybe it's time for this pathetic company to be investigated by an independent watchdog to take a look at what's going on within this so called Business Banking Company.... Simply Avoid and Bank elsewhere as this company is just a pretend bank and not a real one.”
“A joke
Zero customer service, nothing except vague standardised responses which say nothing (froze the account and took 8 days of basic radio silence to explain why and unfreeze)
No IBAN number so you can't retrieve funds from abroad
Only 1 member of staff (in total) can have a login to app / web to make payments
Expense cards can't be used in practice as every purchase needs to be approved in real time by guess who..... the 1 member of staff who has access to the app
The card is so basic it can't be used for anything serious eg rent a car, google ad words etc.
This is not a bank. Its a rebadged basic prepaid card
It's a valuation/ IPO play for the owners
No business can really use this service to operate”
“The perfume smell in Tide Ultra Oxi has given me an ill feeling. I thought I'd try this product, thinking it might help get my sheets cleaner. But I regret ever bringing it into my home. I did two loads today to try it out, and I kept getting a nauseous feeling every time I got near the washer and dryer. Especially nauseous as I folded my sheets. Now I can't shake that smell. It has followed me everywhere in my house and I feel sick. I don't know how to get rid of this stuff now. What a waste of money. Two loads and into the garbage. But how do I dispose of it. I'm feeling really down tonight having purchase and used this product. YUKKK!!! Stay away.”
“Monday 14h March Tide decided to close out account and the reason they gave us 'we can cater for some businesses'. We have been trading for since 2017 and never has a problem and all of a sudden this let alone the 2 bad years with Covid. On the same day 14th March we deposited £1000 via post office. Guess what? Tide is not taking accountability nor returning money. Tide rep 'Alice' admitted she could see the funds being deposited but they did not clear?? Where's the money? Went to post office twice and they confirmed because receipts were provided therefore funds cleared their end which is true as this has always been the case? Cooperate thieves Tide”
“Tide bank is absolutely useless. They can't find over £2000 that's missing from my account. DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY WITH YOUR MONEY. They are the most incompetent group of people I have ever had to deal with”
“Extremely poor small business bank.
- The customer service is truly shocking.
- It suffers from IT problems, glitches and poor design.
- Poor policies with lack of clarity (e.g. forced account closures).
Rather than posting replies to comments on this site "apologising", it's a shame they seem incapable of fixing the root causes of their poor service.
I've moved my small business elsewhere with no regrets.
The fintech sector has many better banks to choose from, avoid Tide.”
“Before you consider using the company beware that they are not a bank! Even though they state on their website “BUSINESS BANK ACCOUNT
Ready for business” they aren’t! This is false advertising. They have frozen my account with no warning stopping money going in and out for 30 days for absolutely no reason at all! They don’t have a phone number and no one has responded to the chat in over 25 hours at this point. Do not use this service, they are not a bank and have the worst customer service I have ever experienced.”
“Even though it states on TIDE's home page "business bank account ready for business" this is NOT. A business bank account. They shut me down for 30 days no money in or Money out with cards blocked with no notice. They missold me as app as a business bank account which they are not. A bank will not shut you down for no reason with no worning, TIDE will! DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE!”
“Please don't waste your time with this bank guys. I opened an account with them then a month in, receive an email advising me my account would be closed and now I'm unable to access my funds to feed my daughter or pay bills. This has left be in a compromising situation financially and has also happened to 2 other friends that I know.
Please don't bother wasting your time, your money isn't protected and they will purposely ignore you when you try to reach out.”
“I have to say, I’ve used a lot of UK banks but this was probably my worst experience. I cannot recommend this company at all - in fact I would encourage anyone strongly to avoid them.”
“Basically stolen £250k from my friends account since 21/02/20 gone to complaint procedure then ombudsman x2 then police / solicitor now action fraud
Full of lies and just steal your money - many others like my friend
The banking is always down for maintenance so u will always let down your hard working staff
They will ruin your business
Go with a high street bank
Avoid like the plague”
“Do not use this company. Early on in the pandemic, I was offered a £1,000 credit facility for a fixed monthly payment (equivalent to Wonga/Payday loans in cost!!). Unfortunately, my drivers license expired in January and my mobile phone broke and I have not able to access my account since March. Fee's continued to accrue, transactions which should not have been authorised were coming out of the account and I was refused access to my account for 7 months as I was unable to verify my ID, which was impossible as the DVLA was closed and only printing licenses for key workers. Therefore I could not access my account at all.
I am now being requested that I pay them £1,000, despite this being almost entirely made up of their own fees for a service I was unable to use. They refused to waive any fees and made threats to take legal action if I did not pay this amount in full, despite my company closing down due to Coronavirus. I tried to compromise with them and asked that at least a couple of months of fees be waived (£60 per month), this was also declined by them.
Do not use this company, they will take whatever they can get, no matter your situation. Their support is non-existant and their staff are incompetent and refuse to take into consideration any other views but their own.
As of today's date, I still don't have access to my account and am unable to assess any of the transactions they 'claim' I owe them.
Note: If tide support reply to this, then they are just trying to make themselves look good, the reality is they have ignored emails for 5+ days at a time, then said I was outside of their 'time-frame'. The issue was also escalated to a manager, who clearly did not read the entire email thread and made accusations against me which were false, trying to pass blame.”
“BEWARE of this so called "bank". First of all it's not a business account, heck it's not even a bank! It's just a ring fenced Barclays account operated with an e-money license by PrePay Solutions (owned by MasterCard) and the only thing you get is a 'business' card (bloody Pre-paid too, not even debit). The rest is just fancy PR to appeal to millennials etc. Don't expect the service you would get from a real business account at a real bank...
With this out of the way here is my recent experience: This so called "bank" does not comply with FCA rules when it comes to chargebacks. I signed up with an online financial advise subscription that offered a 3 months free trial. I cancelled the subscription 4 days prior to renewal, but on the renewal date they charged me anyway.
So, I notified Tide right away of this unauthorised charge and sent them the evidence (copy of my cancellation email). I was told to email the merchant again for a refund as this is what their finance partner (Barclays or Mastercard?) advised. So I did, and I even cc'd in Mrs B. from Tide, so they can see that I am just being blatantly ignored by the merchant.
Weeks later after me wanting an update she asked me again for all the evidence and a screenshot of the email I sent to the merchant, even though she was copied into said email. Already annoyed to hear that nothing seemed to have happened, I sent the screenshots again.
While all of this 'investigating' was happening weeks and months were passing. According to FCA, the funds should have been credited to my account by Tide within 24hrs of my reporting of the charge and not to be withheld unduly (unless of course my request itself was fraudulent).
Tide only did this after 2 months (7th April) and ONLY because I made them aware of this duty (This has happened with Tide once before with another chargeback, so repeatedly in breach of FCA rules). Instantly after my message they credited my account with the missing amount.
However, on the 1st May they took the money away again and said my chargeback was unsuccessful. No letter of deadlock. No explanation. This would have been a simple case of 4837 (Mastercard chargeback codes), aka No Cardholder Authorization.
While writing this review they actually just sent me the Mastercard report. Now brace yourselves. They put down the chargeback reason as: 'merchandise not received', instead of 'unauthorised charge'. As the subscription was probably active for the past 3 months while this dispute was going on the merchant had easy game to refute this chargeback reason! Therefore Tide had been utterly negligent and incompetent. If they hadn't been so inept and filled out the request properly, as requested from the set out, this chargeback would have been granted in no time.
Now I have been waiting another 5 days (mind this has been going on for 3 months now) to hear back from them after making them aware of their mistake. I was told there would be a response within 3 days, but nothing. I will now have to take this to the FCA/financial ombudsman to take this matter further.
People, please do yourselves a favour and DON'T entrust your hard earned money to these dilettante fintech startups. They are just Incapable of managing and protecting your money.”
