Bank of Ireland Reviews 

My name is Attracta Mcardle account:903322 and I have been a customer of Bank of Ireland for about 60 years. Currently I am living in Florida for 45 years and have still have kept my account open. For the last few years I have been trying to set up my account on line without any success. On Tuesday of this week I went into the Bank of Ireland at Sutton Cross, Dublin and was assisted by Tara who spent an hour of her valuable time working with me and the on line customer service people. We ran into some glitches but she solved them with final success. She helped me link my Irish account to my American account and also went to the cahier to make sure that my account was still active. In the past I have been directed to customer service on line but because I had only an American phone number this was a problem but once again Tara solved it. I have been in other bigger branches of your bank but they are so busy with limited staff they do not have the time to assist someone from a different country like me, I stay at the Marina Hotel Sutton just so that I can do my business with your Sutton branch who are more helpful than any other branch I have been into. Cheers to the staff of your Sutton Branch and especial thanks to Tara.
I commend Tara for the employee of the Month and year she is a valued member of Bank of Ireland and needs to be recognised as so.

Honestly the average of 1.3 stars is too high for this organisation.
From the people in the back end of the business to the people at the counter there seems to be a disgraceful attitude that is pervasive in the organisation. I’d rather gouge my eyeballs out than deal with this organisation again in any capacity.

Absolutely Michael Mouse organisation - just appalling. To make matters worse, they charge you for the privilege of holding your money. There has to be a more equitable and fairer system. Never trust a bank - the house always wins!

My mother who is 90 went to the bank to speak to someone in private. She was introduced to the bank manager who spoke to me over the phone to discuss her issue but when I rang bank 2 minutes later as the phone went dead he had walked off and left my mam sitting on her own in the bank totally confused and feeling very ignored. I then spoke to a woman who was obviously handed the phone to "deal with us". It was an absolutely shocking way to treat a 90 year old woman who had made her way to the bank in her own (I live in a different county). After 2 days I called back to see if her request had been actioned only to be sent to a call center in india. 3 times I called the branch phone number and 3 times I was directed to the call center. I explained that I needed to speak directly to the branch, 3 times my call was routed to the call center. I'm absolutely appalled at how bank of Ireland treated my mam. She's banked here all her life and once in her life she needed some additional support and it wasn't there for her, in fact she was made feel like she was being a bother. She left the bank in tears. I wasn't able to be with her on the day but if I had of been there I wonder would the treatment have been the same. Shame on you BOI you're an absolute disgrace.

I have been a long-standing Bank of Ireland customer and I do recognise that the bank appears to be trying to modernise its digital offering. The recent rollout of Zippay, allowing customers to send money to contacts, is a step in the right direction. However, in truth it still looks very basic compared with what services such as Revolut have been offering for years.

Unfortunately my recent experiences with Banking 365 phone support highlight just how far the bank still has to go.

On several occasions I had no option but to call Banking 365 and each time the call was routed to an outsourced call centre in India. The average waiting time before speaking to someone was over 20 minutes, which is the opposite of what modern digital banking should look like.

I have absolutely no issue with the bank outsourcing support internationally. However the reality of the experience was frustrating. The call quality was poor, I had to repeat myself several times, and it often felt as though the person answering the call was following a script rather than understanding the issue.

A recent example: I received a text message confirming that our car finance was being paid in full. When I checked the app I could not see this reflected on the account. After 29 minutes waiting and nearly 40 minutes on the call, the agent initially began reading a scripted explanation which did not address the simple question I asked – whether a direct debit was due to go out that day.

Another example involved my wife calling to verify a new card. She was asked to name three recent transactions while safely calling from the car. Because the amounts were not exactly correct, the card could not be verified. This type of rigid process simply creates frustration for customers.

The contrast with newer digital banks is stark. While Bank of Ireland talks about digital transformation, the day-to-day customer experience still often feels like dealing with a large banking “supertanker” trying slowly to change course.

There is clearly investment happening and improvements are starting to appear, but until customer support, wait times and digital functionality catch up with modern fintech services, many customers will understandably continue to compare the experience with platforms like Revolut.

We applied for a mortgage back in Feb 2017 with BOI and we found a property they dragged their feet and we almost lost the property it was almost the end of July before the funds got released, after many phone calls and emails.
2025 we were in a position to pay off the remainder owing, I spoke to someone in the Mortgage dept who told us we wouldn't save anything by paying it off early, 12 months later we was discussing our finances with a FA at the AIB he told us to pay off the mortgage asap as we would save interest and the life Assurance which went with the mortgage, I immediately phoned the BOI mortgage dept and got a repayment figure, the staff on the phone appeared quite cold and off but we went straight down to our local branch and paid off the figure given to us which was over 50,000 3 weeks later after the staff member told me she would inform the life Assurance dept of change in circumstances and the policy would no longer be required they took out of our account another monthly payment 4 days early of the due date and before I cancelled the direct debit on their advise I was horrified to be told that the mortgage was still live as their was 1 cent owing on the mortgage, I honestly thought this was some sort of joke one cent I couldn't believe that the bank had pulled what I think is a very vindictive, dishonest and malicious stunt to pull, so for 1 cent the mortgage account was still open, after we'd just paid in excess of 53,000 off, I did write a complaint by email and I did receive a call back 3 days later but that was it, I was told that it would be investigated and looked into but unfortunately as we live in a society of no one is ever held responsible for their actions I won't hold my breath, getting a mortgage through the BOI has been for me probably the most stressful encounter of my life, we had been offered a mortgage with the TSB and I swear to God I wish we'd had gone with them.
My advise to any 1st time home buyers would be please for your own personal health and sanity shop around.

I have trouble with the Bank of Ireland new 6 digit pin .In trying to register it I got blocked out of 2 accounts .Called the on line service and got through to Sabari . He could not distinguish between my company name and my trading name . Questioned my account No. Very little knowledge of his job . A complete disaster .

Had to transfer a small amount of money to pay an invoice on an electronic system as BOI 365 did not facilitate this - still awaiting transfer after 36 hours - phoned help line and waited 40 minutes - eventually got a response which focused on my responsibilities etc - not sure why I persist with this organisation

Their new passcode app doesn't work. In fact it's an absolute joke! I am unable to transfer funds online to my revolut. It gets stuck in the process of loading, then it cancels it and after a few goes locks me out of my account. How can they get it so wrong? I can no longer put up with this incompetent nonsense. I'm moving bank.

My business partner and I flew from our residence in the UK to Dublin and opened a business account at the beginning of November 2025. 4 moths later in February 2026 we have still failed to gain access to the account. We have tried many pins and passwords until we finally gave up. I am familiar with the BOI as I have had an online current account for many years. However, it seems this recently opened business account is not to be. I wondered if anyone else had encountered this problem. There is little support.

A third class bank.
Waited for 25 minutes to connect with a customer care executive to enquire about , and she forwarded the call to sales team.

Bank of Ireland sent me a letter on January 2nd stating that if I didn’t respond within three weeks or make a transaction on my account, it would be closed.

The problem? I only received the letter today — 6–7 weeks later. When I checked the app, my account had already been closed.

I called Bank of Ireland and explained the situation: it took nearly seven weeks for their letter to reach Denmark and be delivered to my mailbox. I asked if they could reinstate my account, and the answer was no. My only option was to apply for a new account. I don’t want a new account since my banking details are already shared with several institutions from when I lived in Ireland.

Because of this hassle, I also asked them to close my savings account. They then told me I would need to visit my local branch to process the closure. I had to explain that I no longer live in Ireland and I’m certainly not flying there to close an account with €2 in it.

Apparently, my only other option is to write a letter 🤦

If you want to do business with a bank that operates on IT infrastructure from the 1990s, go ahead and use Bank of Ireland. Otherwise, I’d suggest finding a better alternative.

Very slow service
Very difficult to get any new accounts open , even a basic savings account
App not user friendly disappointed
Been a customer for 3 years and will now move to AIB

Absolute rubbish bank, they should change the first letter b to a big W ! They do not have any customer service, instead they have "waste your time service". They cannot get anything right. The latest is this stupid PASSCODE that they have introduced. Doesn't work! I called "Customer Waste Your Time service" multiple times only to speak to some person in india that does not have a clue what to do. I'm with this bank more than 20 years but I'm leaving once I can get access to my accounts. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF OPENING AN ACCOUNT WITH THEM !!!

Bank of Ireland are so unnecessarily clunky and complicated. You need two security codes to log into the website, and for some stupid reason they recently made you discard the passcode and pick a new code, and they have a pin and passcode and it's really unclear which they are referring to. Why have a pin and a passcode both six digits and a six digit user code? you have to log into the website to do things that you can't do on the app, you need different codes to log into the same account from different devices and I have recently had payments declined for no reason and transfers from current account to credit card taking an unnecessarily long time. And the payment alert to your phone appears as a notification but then disappears when you click on it so the entire message can't be read. It's pretty useless and I find it so frustrating I am considering closing my account with them.

What An Appalling Bank They Are, I Was Trying To Contact Them About Charge back On Money I Paid For Products On A Site Which I Presumed Was Legitimate but Turned Out To Be A Scammers Website 🙄
You Can't Even Talk To Anyone In Person To Explain It's All Automated Through Text And Email, Which You Can't Even Reply To. So The Refused My Claim Because I Couldn't Supply Them With Sufficient Information From The Scammers Who Weren't Even Engaging With Me??... So Really No Customer Service, It's All About Protecting The Scammers And Just Running Customers Around In Circles.
They Give Us All This Advice About Scammers, But When It Comes Down To It, They Themselves Bank Of Ireland Don't Protect Us The Customers Unless You Can Supply Them With Reems Of Paperwork From The Scammers Who Don't Engage With Anyone Once They Take Your Money.
Absolutely Horrible Customer Service....
I'd Give - 4 Stars ⭐ If I Could...

Very difficult comucation should be better

Honestly couldn’t be worse than this, their app is absolutely rubbish and outdated, payment authorisations frequently don’t work or show up on the app and they then have the neck to charge a ‘maintenance fee’ every month.

They stay this way as there is little to no competition in banking in Ireland, there are banks in many developing nations that far exceed the technology and services offered by BOI and don’t charge monthly fees.

I rather stupidly moved a Cash ISA from Tembo to these people and whereas they have transferred the money they say the correct forms were not sent. I will contact the Banking Ombudsman shortly but beware if you are trying to move money to these people.