Cafonline Reviews

Claim

A woefully old-fashioned experience

Friendly and helpful staff but a terribly outdated bank Any time you want to change something paper forms have to be signed For us that means sending forms around the country for different signatories to sign Then CAF deny that they ve ever received the documents so you have to do the whole rigmarole again but this time paying for registered post We continually have foreign payments rejected which has cost us our relationship with donors Agree with everything else that s been said Salaries are paid at about 7pm staff want to help but often don t know how It s desperately outdated the charges are expensive and if I had the time and energy to move banks then I would

We have just sent a six digit CAF Bank UniqueCode to your phone number

We have just sent a six digit CAF Bank UniqueCode to your phone number Oh ok I ll just pop that in before getting on with my review Ok My experience with CAF has been that it is not so much red tape but red superglue sticking into every crevice it can find itself It has We have just sent a six digit CAF Bank UniqueCode to your phone number Again Right right one second Ok done It has been an ordeal to do the simplest thing from approving payments to finding a useable bank statement and heaven forbid you want to make a larger change such as adding changing an authorised memb We have just sent a six digit CAF Bank UniqueCode to your phone number Sigh Ok Fine Here s the code As I was saying the amount of things that must be done through paperwork beggar belief and We have just sent a six digit CAF Bank UniqueCode to your phone number Unfortunately CAF I have only four digits for you

Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud

My then new charity was referred to CAF when we learnt the donation platform we had hoped to use had closed and we were pleased to learn CAF could look after our donations and banking together We discovered very soon that the process of setting up the bank account was actually far more tedious than setting up the charity itself pages upon pages of forms that I had to run around the county to get signed by various people before sending them in the post The section of their online portal where we first thought we might take occasional actions on the bank account just turned out to be a page of more forms we had to print fill in and post to them They seem to have built their entire operation on the basis of sending as much paper through the post as possible I cannot imagine how anybody might have sat down at a desk one day and thought this would be a good idea Need to update your signatories CAF has a form for that Want to send money abroad Another form to post The only reason we never applied for a debit card is because we couldn t face yet another form We persevered through this for a couple of years until I made the mistake of changing my name and asking how I might go about updating this with CAF It seems every staff member has their own process for this and when you follow it the paperwork you have to send in more forms in the post of course goes to a different staff member before being returned to you as incorrect So you follow the latest staff member s process and wait and a week later the paperwork just comes back in the post again I actually laughed when I opened today s post We need to send money owed to a party abroad but the forms for this keep being returned to us because CAF won t recognise anything I do in my new name and no two people at CAF seem able to agree on what is required for them to update their records At this point I m wondering whether it might be easier just to change my name back legally CAF seems to be a centre for generating as much activity as possible while simultaneously ensuring that nothing actually gets done It is truly extraordinary I have never known anything like it

Stone Age Banking

Getting a new user account set up and logging in successfully takes months All new users are initially blocked when they try to login due to some bug in the security handling Reversing this is difficult as the CAF staff don t know what causes it or how to reverse it Many phone calls later with new user user administrator and CAF person all on the call and eventually it works Until you put a toe wrong logging in and you re blocked again Note this is a block at the CAF end not something the user administrator can reverse despite CAF s protestations

Not fit for purpose

I donated to Amnesty I had a regular newsletter I notified CAF when I changed address The newsletters stopped When I tried to cancel my donation they couldnt find my address The 3 people I dealt with were not fit for purpose The same as this company You are better off donating straight to the charity rather than pay wages to uneducated and unhelpfull school leavers The One Star is for cosmetic purpose only

Trading on their legacy

I am experienced charity leader and have worked with a number of banks over the years We signed up with CAF during the pandemic as we had a US citizen on the board and I couldn t find another charity bank who would take us on with a foreign trustee Having worked with CAF for about three years virtually everything about the bank feels broken or antiquated My interactions with them are generally more of a hindrance than a help The people on the customer service desks are friendly but poorly informed Digital is about 15 years behind the curve Reporting is very unintuitive and time consuming as their processes have obviously not been designed by a team which understands their customer s needs I feel sorry for the person in charge of their business overhaul as I can t think that there is much that doesn t need a total redesign If you are thinking of using CAF as a banking partner I would strongly recommend you read their customer reviews first

Salary Payments

How can a modern bank make people wait until early evening on payday to receive their salary payments The money clearly leaves the account in the early hours of the morning but then sits somewhere until early evening

Slow in resolving problems and incompetence

The bank is very slow in resolving problems For example our charity has waited 25 days and is still waiting to receive back a foreign payment that was rejected by the recipient s bank Also the bank s annual review of our charity s bank account in 2022 was very long and cumbersome and at the end of it the bank unjustifiably threatened to close down the charity s bank account Our charity raised a complaint and the bank was forced to apologize

I hate this bank so much and can not

I hate this bank so much and can not wait to complete our switch to another Nearly everything has to be done by post requiring users to download print and fill out of forms all the time even the most simplest of things like an address update requires posting forms Their phone service takes ages we re constantly asked for different passwords and the sheer number of passwords and codes we have to have to access different aspects of our account even when we re logged in is ridiculous It s impossible for one person to remember all of these so we have to write them all down which isn t secure at all And if you every want to change one guess what Yep download print and fill out a form and post it

Beyond incompetent

If there was a zero option I d choose it You d be better off banking with a Russian bank because frankly this bank is so incompetent your charity s assets might as well be frozen Twice we ve agreed urgent action sent in the paperwork twice the people on the receiving end have done nothing different to any other request And then you call up to find out how they re doing and even then despite their monumental cock-ups they still can t guarantee to prioritise the work And don t get me started on the online banking app which is so OTT on its security sending 6 and 7 digits to your phone for Every Single Transaction then ask you to confirm twice that in the end you re paying no attention whatsoever to the payments you re authorising you re so cheesed off and preoccupied with keying in numbers correctly Choose ANY other bank