Are Customer Complaints A Worthy Measure Of How Good a Bank Is?

I was just reading an article over at MarketWatch about the best and worst banks in the US based on customer complaint data. The article doesn’t really dig deeply into any of the data provided. It just provides an overview of total complaints - it’s not broken down by division or in any other meaningful way.

It’s quite obvious that larger institutions receive more complaints than smaller institutions. A better measure of the complaints might be - 1 complaint/1000 customers. At least this ratio would give some perspective.

Here’s the data:

10 national banks with largest number of complaints in 2007

Bank Number of complaints % of total
Bank of America 7,230 25.5
J.P. Morgan Chase 4,890 17.3
Citigroup 3,742 13.2
Wells Fargo 2,695 9.5
HSBC North America 1,963 6.9
Wachovia 1,265 4.5
U.S. Bancorp 1,027 3.6
National City 586 2.1
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group 537 1.9
Key Corp 343 1.2
Total Top 10 complaints 24,278 85.7
Total complaints 28,316 100

I’m a customer at Bank Of America and have always received great service from them. On several occasions I have called them and always received prompt service and accurate answers. When I’ve needed changes to my account, they have been completed accurately and in a timely manner. I have no complaints. My personal list of best banks has Bank of America at the top of it.

Would the above data influence you to do business with one bank over another? Based on your experience, are these numbers right?

April 3, 2008 | Filed Under Banking 

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