Bankwest Reviews 129

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.