ING Australia Reviews 1,957

ING used to be the place to be.

Great overseas rates, withdrawals, savings account rates, and I received a bonus for signing up.

As time has gone on however, they have become much more stingy with what they offer, and one has to jump through hoop after hoop to get the maximum savings account. Account has been locked for no reason, and friends have had issues with KYC checks.

But the biggest frustration is trying to refer friends to ING - both the referer and referee are offered a bonus for successful sign ups, only for the bonuses to not be paid, and there is NO WAY to check each referral status!

Out of the 8 people that I signed up:
- I received a bonus for two of them, both those people did not - one of those people even signed up their spouse, and she got the bonus but he didn't! How does that make any sense?
-1 person had his account locked immediately after trying to transfer out the $1000 that was put in to be eligible for the sign up. He had to all up multiple times, submit more ID, then had to go to a POLICE STATION for them to verify his ID - after chasing and chasing, he eventually got his account unlocked.

I no longer bank with or can recommend ING, and I will not be referring friends in future.

Been trying to call for over an hour during business hours with no answer. And the hold music is infuriating, every minute they cycle through the same few messages, so you end up hearing them OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. For a bank with little/no physical presence, this is unacceptable.

On hold for one hour before I got to talk to someone

I have had an ING account for about a generation now. When they first opened in Australia ~25 years ago they were pretty efficient. Everything worked and they offered higher rates of interest. My impression from that time was good. Fast forward two decades and the rot really seems to have set in. They are the only bank of which I am aware that routinely seems to want certified copies of passports, etc (other banks simply ask for your passport number and medicare details and then are able to update/reverify your identity whenever they feel this is needed). ING are also dysfunctional in other ways. I was recently trying to open a new kind of account (as the old high interest accounts are no longer high interest, due I suspect to ING having quite a few older customers who have left money in these accounts - ING have this money essentially for free now and don't want to upset that particular, more than slightly dodgy, licence to print money). Anyway, I was trying to open an account. Should be simple enough. With their competitors it is often instant and easy to do this. But not with ING. After three weeks, something like an hour on hold over two conversations, multiple secure messages, ING providing timelines and then consistently failing to meet them, ING deciding that they needed a certified copy of Mum's death certificate (she died seven years ago) for reasons they were never able to explain (and I cannot imagine there is any rational explanation), ING finally totally contradicted multiple represenations to that point and decided they cannot in fact open a new account at all. I discussed my experience with family and friends and discovered that mutliple people I know have had bad experiences - one going on over three years with far more twists and turns than my three week ordeal. While in theory this company still offers products that could be useful to me, I have decided that life is too short. I suspect may others would have reached the same conclusion (and I see below that I was right about this). How sad. Lucky they are not a monopoly I guess!

The SLIME OF HUMANITY.
Their website says 7 days for a bank Cheque to clear, customer service says 10 business days. ING are full of IT!.
Avoid this bank like the plague.

Dishonest & Unethical with terrible customer service!
They didn't honour the interest rate as promoted on their website for my new fixed term deposit.
Would never recommend or use ING again!

I have an account with them, profitable and quick to solve issues.

Abismal wait time to speak to a contact centre agent. Was on hold for an hour and twenty minutes this evening.

My husband and I banked with ING for many years including a period when we both worked overseas. We had always maintained Australia as our permanent home for tax purposes. After returning to reside back in Australia permanently, I was harassed year after year by customer service agents for tax information which I had previously submitted and was apparently not in record. They claim my information was not updated and not filed correctly. This went on every year for 3 years - unbelievable. The calls were so frustrating and when I requested to speak with the customer service officers’ managers, I was repeatedly told that was not possible. The last time I received that call again was earlier this year (2024). I had enough so I withdrew all my money and told my husband to close our joint account and I joined another bank.

The wait time for international call is horrible it take almost 1hr wait just increase you have an emergency and need to call international InG plz don’t it wast of money waiting for 1 hrs . I called for get new card send me in overseas done tht now my online banking is block 🤦🏻‍♀️ round 2 I have to 1hr

the wait times to get your phone call answered is terrible. They dont even tell you where you are in the phone queue.

The whole KYC is horrible too, I provided documents all notarized and they still VAGUELY say "documents are missing" and then dont tell me what they are!

Here is my message to them:

Dear ING Direct,

I called during your business hours, I waited for over 2 hours and still no response. I must say your phone system is atrocious, you don't even have a IVR system that tells the customer what number they are in the queue nor a callback system where the customer leaves their phone number and ING calls them up. I thought ING was a large and reputable bank.

Anyway, I am not sure why I am receiving the below message, when I sent the documents that were requested last month. I am not sending anything else, I am done.

If you have a problem with the documents uploaded so far, please be advised that in the state of California, the notary is done this way as it's the State Law here in the USA. I am unable to send it any other way.

If it's not enough, then feel free to freeze my bank accounts. I was going to put 100K into a term deposit but I will go elsewhere, I also will seek to look elsewhere for my home insurance too.

This is unnecessary bureaucratic minutiae that I really don't have time for, I have sent you NOTARIZED documents and you still try to wrap me around red tape, then you dont answer my calls. This is how you will lose customers!

If you freeze my bank accounts, please close them and in compliance with the data privacy laws, I demand you remove all my drivers license, australian citizenship certificate and personal details from your system. Thank you!

Do as you please, I will take my business elsewhere.

Mandatory "Know your Customer" details need to be provided to stop the account being blocked - they have already taken the details twice in past 5 years, but here we are again. Wife and I have spent a minimum of 12 hours on hold calling them to give details, no call shorter than an hour, before giving up. I have transferred all funds from them and stopped any automatic payments into the account. Have been on hold another 40 mins currently trying to cancel the account - good luck to anyone who belives this bank cares or will provide any customer service at all

I believe there a good online banking option if u have no other banking option

It took over 40 minutes on hold before I spoke to someone. I wanted to add my wife to have access to our savings accounts. It can’t be done over the phone or online. I have to close down the accounts and open up new accounts as joint accounts. And I can’t do this on the phone. It has to be done online. It will be easier for me to close theses accounts down and not reopen them

deposit required amount, do 5 transactions but you won't get bonus interest. they keep the first months interest of yours. only after 2 months using your savings do you get anything. Then if you need to dip in & accept you will lose a months interest, no you will lost 2 when you start again. try one of the honest outfits, movebank, ubank, anz plus they pay you next month.

My account was locked and I was instructed to call the help line. Wait time was 50 minutes. I had no choice than to sit on line and wait. God help me if I'd been overseas. When eventually picked up, my matter was dealt with efficiently and politely. For a bank the size of ING to treat its clients like this is utterly disgraceful. Have they never heard of a call back facility? Even the ATO has one. When I complained I was told my complaint would be registered and I would receive a call on March 28!! Can't wait.

I have been locked out of my account on and off since last August, 2023. It is a joint account with my husband which I never use. As a result of this, I did not see the messages asking for verification of my details (we have had the account for 20 years and all of our details are unchanged!) Consequently, I have spent hours and hours on the phone with ING. I am sent messages that say my details have been updated, but yet am still locked out!

While the staff on the phone are lovely, I cannot believe that the bank has the power to withhold our funds from us.

Extremely poor service and incredibly stressful and frustrating.

Cell on bye goods

If I could give a minus I would!! Abhorrent customer service! Waiting on hold for 1.5 hours on two separate occasions only to be given incorrect information. Froze our accounts because of verification rules. We’ve been customers for years with no issues. The lady on the phone said change banks! I am still in shock, never have we been treated so badly! DO NOT EVER GO WITH ING!!