Cafonline Reviews

AVOID Recommend Co-op Bank

AVOIDAfter banking with CAF as a Trustee for many years my account is finally closed and it is such a relief I fail to see how they are still in business Every request either got lost or took six weeks for them to come back to me with a reason as to why it couldn t be actioned Online banking was very difficult to use Contacting customer service meant a wait of over half an hour to talk to someone who then couldn t help This bank is stuck in the dark ages I moved to the Co-op Bank it has been a breath of fresh air

Stuck in the dark ages

Hallelujah I thought it was just me CAF are beyond hopeless We have just had a donor try to transfer a large amount of money from Barclays Despite confirming our account number and sort code Barclays refused to make the transfer because they could not verify the account with CAF I even offered to send Barclays a copy of our CAF statement showing the account details It appears the problem is not with Barclays the problem is with CAF Exactly the same thing happened a couple of weeks ago trying to transfer money to CAF from Starling bank This is not the first time we ve had trouble with CAF the staff are rude and when we wrote a formal complaint we received a letter refusing to accept any of our points and quite frankly was insulting to an organisation that has more than 300 000 sat in an account Take my advice Do Not open a bank account with these Muppets they are stuck in the dark ages

youth work payroll

I work for a church as a youth worker The church use CAF bank to do my payroll I have never had such a shocking lack of consistency in the day i get payed They regularly miss payments which have to be chased up Also unlike other bank they wait to the last minute of the banking day for it to be transferred This means that if it doesn t get transferred i have to wait days to get it sorted

Would not recommend

My husband died recently I was a signatory to the account When told of my husband s death the account was frozen and funds transferred to an account they administer as my husband had not left a letter of his wishes Very distressing

Dreadful service whether donor or

Dreadful service whether donor or trustee As a donor CAF unlike other providers describes all donations as charity donation with out charity name so have constant battle working out what it what and whether any are frauds 3rd time this year today Made even worse by CAF classifying me as a money launderer last year because I made small annual donations to local homeless charity as a trustee I know all about the need to know your donor but CAF applies it aggressively to trivial amounts where no likelihood of risk As a trustee of a charity which banks with CAF on-line banking is dreadfully cumbersome every time I log on again today monthly fees are high and interest on cash balances woefully low But no real competition to CAF so it gets away with it

Fees increased x4 after they had my cash

Opened an account put a substantial sum of money in as a long term plan and had it invested all as part of a long term giving plan expecting growth to have a reasonable impact on offsetting investment fees and inflation but totally accepting the investment risk They then decide to increase fees x4 My only options are to accept the increased fees which are unlikely to ever be offset by growth or transfer to a non invested cash account with no fees but also therefore no growth and also no interest I was forced to take the painful decision to go for a no fees account but also no investment no interest no growth Absolutely not what I signed up for and not a credible long term plan But once they have your cash you can never get it back while they can change the terms as they wish and you can do nothing about it Avoid them at all costs

Woeful

We recently opened a CAF account for our charity Thanks to their incompetence we have already lost one valuable donor Using their own CAF donation link which is connected to a charity account which they run CAF managed to lose the donation More broadly I m really disappointed with the quality of the general offering - especially digital which feels antiquated Online banking is cumbersome the navigation is poor their own products feel disjointed CAF banking and CAF donate for example act like separate companies they lack basic integrations i e Mailchimp there is no app it s hit and miss as to whether the log-in code will arrive on your mobile it takes ages to run what should be a simple donor report fees are high and interest is low I could go on Sooner or later hopefully sooner I think another charity bank will sweep up the non-profit sector in the UK not before time They are riding on a past reputation that they no longer deserve

Very disappointing - Fail to pass on payments 4 Fee

Very disappointing I wanted to donate monthly to a charity and used Payroll Giving through CAF I discovered that the charity wasn t receiving monthly donations but at random intervals CAF provide no annual statement which would have highlighted they deduct a fee of 4 The practises of this organisation need investigating At best they re failing to follow clients instructions at worst they re operating fraudulently

Consistently Problematic Tiresome

No single element of their operations has been of benefit to our organisation and despite extremely high interest rates for the last 2 years we re still paying them for the pleasure Software problems staff contradicting each other albeit politely consistent access and payment issues no joined up thinking internally Disappointed leaving promptly after years of hoping they would modernise A bank of past days clearly not able to keep up-to-date with the competition Go somewhere else there are plenty of other banks

Seem to be fraudulent in their

Seem to be fraudulent in their approach have kept donors money not passed on and now not communicating properly Shocking Using excuse of we need to do due diligence before we can pass the money on Queries answered months ago by ourselves we are also a registered charity what other checks do you need