Monday Morning Moan - Metro Bank’s AI-enabled trashing of its customer service reputation is a timely reminder of the need for human intelligence

After 36 years in this game, I’ve written a few things that I look back on and regret given how events have turned out since I hit the publish button. One of them is a 2015 article entitled Metro - building a bank on decent CRM (for once), in which I told diginomica readers of my good experiences with the bank.

If anyone signed up to Metro on the back of that, I can only apologise. I'm very sorry to have mis-led you. 

But back then, Metro had a compelling pitch:

We’ve built a different kind of high street bank. A bank with stores that are open when it suits you, seven days a week. A bank where you can walk in without an appointment and walk out with a working account, debit card and all. A bank that tells you exactly what you’re getting, in language that actually makes sense. A bank that puts you first.

And there would be, it proudly boasted in signage in branches and online, ‘No Stupid Bank Rules’.

Music to my ears.

A decade is a long time

That was then.

The reality today is that Metro has taken much of what made it different and fresh and appealing, cast it to the gutter, and decided to behave like pretty much any other banking operation, complete with shoddy customer service routinely hard-wired into the corporate DNA as a result.

Last week CEO Daniel Frumkin proudly told analysts and investors:

We fund ourselves more cheaply than any high street bank...We were the only bank in the UK, the only bank in the UK*, to reduce costs during 2025, and we brought them down by seven percent.

(*His repetition - for emphasis/pride?)

And those cost cuts show.

Things have been deteriorating for some time. Back in 2024, it was announced that Metro branch extended opening hours, which had been every day of the year except Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, were to change, with the bank now be closing on Sundays, and many outlets on Saturday as well, and taking every public holiday going.

And that hasn't been the only change. Six months ago, Frumkin was boasting:

We have 38% fewer colleagues onshore today than we had 18 months ago. We've re-structured our frontline distribution team. We've reduced store hours...our partnership with Infosys has given us access to new colleagues who bring something different to Metro. We've upgraded our financial crime capabilities. We've upgraded our fraud technologies, and we've re-done our call center infrastructure to take advantage of AI.

So, if I might summarise so far, in my own words, my personal reading of the strategy is:

• Slash in-house jobs, with impact on morale on those unclear remaining, (although I personally know of one former staffer who couldn’t wait to find a new job last year and says it’s bad) - check!

• Ditch one of your competitive differentiators, the extended opening hours - check!

• Offload your operational problems to a ‘big ticket’  outsourcer - check!

• Throw some money into AI because...well, because AI - check! 

And those are just the ones the CEO is happy to brag about!

Cards off the table and out of the branch!

Actually the messaging from CEO Frumkin is frankly a bit mixed. On the one hand, he tells investors:

Stores create a bit of a digital halo for us. We open more accounts digitally after we've opened a store.

But then, minutes later,  he admits:

We continue to invest in some of our digital offerings and some of the things where, honestly, we're a bit behind the competitors.

In terms of competitive differentiation, he doesn’t mention one of the really fantastic things that Metro used to offer that made the firm stand out from the pack. We’ve all of us at some time or other lost a debit or credit card or had it stolen or damaged. After panicking and cursing loudly, we then cancel the existing cards and wait for replacements to turn up a week or so later, if we’re lucky.

Metro had a service whereby if that was your issue, you could (a) get things cancelled very quickly without having to jump through a hundred bureaucratic hoops to do so - No Stupid Bank Rules, remember - and (b) they’d print you off replacement cards in-store within minutes! Convenient, meeting a genuine customer need, going the extra mile - all very Metro mission-statement circa 2015.

“Too expensive,” my former Metro staffer source tells me. But customers loved it? “The bean-counters didn’t.” So now you wait for the usual extended period of time for a replacement to come in the mail, 10 working days in my case the last time I needed one.

AI and a whole new opportunity to screw up!

Let’s look at Metro and AI - hey, it’s 2026, it’s compulsory! - and a boast from Frumkin last week:

Over 100,000 hours in Amaze Direct, our [national] contact center, have been saved through the use of AI. Scam Detect, which was a new tool launched by us before any other bank has helped 1,700 customers avoid scams.

Well that’s absolutely not my experience of late, quite the reverse in fact. Back in September 2024, one of my bank cards was cloned at Heathrow Airport by some dodgy individual or another. I contacted Metro, cancelled the card, jumped through the now extensive bureaucratic hoops - lots of Stupid Bank Rules! - and eventually got my new card.

Since then, the Metro fraud team have frozen my cards multiple times for no reason whatsoever other than I have spent some money - small amounts, not thousands - with a new retailer. Fraud, screams the AI! Who is this new business you’ve dared to spend £10.45 with?!?! We’re freezing your spending, sir, for your own good, sir, you’re welcome sir!

Last time it happened it was at 3am! I was in bed, asleep, woken by an alert on my phone telling me suspected fraudulent activity had been detected and did I recognise the following payment. I texted back at once pointing out it was the middle of the night and what did they need me to do. The reply was that someone would call me shortly to get more information. No-one never did, and, of course, when I woke up the following morning, the card had been locked due to fraudulent activity!

As there was clearly no chance of anyone from Metro calling me as promised, I phoned the appropriate telephone number to speak to someone. Eventually, after a long, long time, someone answered the phone and proceeded to set about sending my blood pressure even further through the roof. I failed the security questions, you see. Except, I know I didn’t. After previous ‘bang your head off a brick wall’ experiences with Metro’s call center teams, I made sure I had all my login and security info written out in front of me before picking up the phone, just in case I forgot my birthday or my address, that sort of thing. 

No, said the chap on the other end of the line, who seemed decidedly uninterested in amazing me, directly or indirectly, you’ve provided the wrong information. Now, I know from experience what had likely happened. My name is easily mis-spelt - two options for Stuart/Stewart, multiple iterations of Lauchlan - and it’s often keyed in incorrectly. Usually that’s irritating, but hardly fatal - people - people who work for sensible organizations - just re-key it and off we go.

Not at Metro, it seems, where the hapless soul on the other end of the phone told me that he was “only allowed one go” at putting in the security information, and if I wanted to "have another go" I had to hang up, ring back, join the end of the queue, wait until someone graced me by answering the phone, and “try to get it right next time”!

Or, he said, go into a branch and they “might” be able to help me. I am severely mobility-impaired these days and the branch is at the top of a steep hill, I said, that’s why I called in. Basic response - tough! Get yourself into a branch or the card stays locked.

Complaints

So I got in a cab and went to the branch, at considerable inconvenience, in order  to sort out a problem caused by the bank’s AI fraud detection and which I had already addressed immediately it was flagged up in the middle of the night to no effect. I recounted this saga to the admittedly very nice man behind the counter in branch, who had the decency to look embarrassed and apologetic when I said that Metro’s telephone customer service was appalling. He did also advise me to make a formal complaint in writing. 

So I did.

Then I waited. 

And waited.

And waited. 

And waited.

No response or acknowledgement.

Then one day, several weeks later, a letter came in - they have my phone and email details, but snail mail is the preferred comms channel it seems - telling me that it was taking time to deal with my complaint and I would have to wait for a proper response for...well, however long it took them to get their act together.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited, wondering idly why I was bothering since I would almost certainly be told it wasn’t their fault, they’d acted in my best interests, and would I please go away and stop bothering them with unreasonable demands like decent service!

Finally, the big day - a response from someone with the title of Customer Relations Specialist. Initially there was some promise in the reply which acknowledged:

The service you received should have been to a higher level....I agree that the level of service provided was not to the standard we expect our customers to receive.

So what had happened? The text at 3am had committed the bank to having someone phone me within four hours to discuss the problem, a call that never came.  This was, apparently, “a communications error” as the fraud team is only staffed by human beings from 8am, so no such call could ever have taken place!

OK, so this was an over-eager bot that had texted me? How does that work then? The letter is ready for my questions here:

There is an automated system in place which would deem certain transactions as ‘high risk and needing further verification’. In these instances...a restriction is placed until you are able to verify the transaction as legitimate.

But I responded instantly, in the middle of the night, and nothing happened other than my card being locked and my being put to considerable inconvenience.

Nothing to do with us, says Metro, in a statement that should chill the hearts of any of its customers as the Customer Relations Specialist admits that the bank is at the mercy of its AI:

This is not something that we have any control over...as our card monitoring system works using an algorithm...it is unfortunately not something we can alter.

What? Not even one of those brainy bods at Infosys to whom you’re paying copious amounts of money to run your systems? Really?

Nope, and for good measure, Metro’s letter goes on to warn me that that same thing may well happen again (as it already had several times since the legitimate fraud back in 2024 when common-sense says I was clearly flagged on the bank’s system as being on a risk watchlist) as it cannot “prevent all future restrictions”.

(As an aside, when I went to San Francisco in September, I forgot to alert Metro of this, so fully expected to have my card blocked when as soon as I tried to use it in a foreign country, but no, a whole week passed without a series of US transactions, including a couple of large sums for hotel room and a laptop, raising any alarm whatsoever. I got back to Heathrow, bought a coffee, and, you guessed it, the algorithm kicked in and flagged up suspected fraudulent activity aka me spending a fiver in the country in which I live!)

Why bother?

So, there you have it. Computer says no, yet again - the 2026 version being, AI says this is what you will do and if you don’t like it, tough.

Still, money well-spent on a nice bit of AI, eh Mr Frumkin? Actually, to be fair, he doesn’t seem that impressed by the tech either, telling analysts:

I'm not going to get into everybody being very excited about AI because it does wind me up a bit.

Fair enough. Metro winds me up more than a bit - to the extent that I’ve been winding down my engagement with it now and have transferred my main business to a more customer-centric outfit. Frumkin still insists:

The relationship-based model delivers us customers who want to bank with us, who are choosing to bank with us every day. 

But it’s not just me it seems. The latest data from customer feedback platform Trustpilot  - 350 million active reviews and over 60 million monthly active users worldwide - sees Metro scraping a paltry 2.2 average out of a possible five for customer service with over half of those who’ve submitted reviews (52%) ranking it as a one star operation. Recent comments include:

• The worst Bank in the UK I’ve ever had . The app it’s awful. The customer service it’s very poor.

• Antiquated website, no branches outside of cities, very little online functionality, painfully slow access to support using the laborious mobile app.

• Poor. No interest; lots of fees; and its time consuming. It takes a long time for them to answer the phone. Then when you get through they're unhelpful. I have a business bank account and basic stuff like getting signed proof of the account details needs a visit to the branch.

• The worst customer service I have ever dealt with.

I can’t disagree with any of that.

Metro Bank is a timely use case for organizations across multiple sectors into how you can take a great reputation for good service and customer-centricity and trash it with a few basic decisions.

Do I have anything good to say about Metro Bank in 2026?

Well, they still have free dog biscuits on the counter...for now.  Get them while they last!

Oh, and credit where credit’s due, someone, somewhere, has had enough self-awareness to decide it might be an idea to remove the ‘No Stupid Bank Rules!’ signage from view.

Very wise.