The way all banks will be? Please, no

This is so embarrassing. I mean, you don't have to be an expert in personal finance to know that new concepts in banking invariably mean trouble. The delayed launch, the just-asking-for-things-to-go-wrong name and the incomprehensible pre-launch adverts should have been warning enough.

The sensible thing would have been to wait for 'the way all banks will be' to settle down a bit before switching our mortgage, current and savings accounts. But instead, on the day Intelligent Finance (IF) opened for business, my other half and I became two of its very first customers.

Nearly two years on, we are very impressed with the way in which Smile is looking after our cash and we're even reasonably pleased with the new deal we got from the lender we had been planning to switch our mortgage from.

Because it didn't work out with IF. The idea of offsetting our current and savings account balances against our outstanding mortgage debt looked fine on paper, as did the more competitive interest rate. But I just couldn't get to grips with IF's new way of banking. I managed the initial stage, which was arranging and paying the £165 fee for the mortgage valuation. I also did a pretty good job of filling in the conveyancer's questionnaire.

But I completely messed up the 'Confirmation of Application' by making more than 10 corrections and five or so changes, which meant that they had to start all over again.

So I was clearly to blame for the fact that it took three attempts to get the names on our cheque book right. My fault too for having a Scottish-sounding surname (the call centre is based in Scotland) and for not making it clear that when I said the names on the cheque book were wrong, it was just the spelling of mine that needed changing - although I have to admit that the resulting account in the name of 'A V Wallis & A V Wallis' did have a certain ring to it.

My inadequacies didn't end there. Apart from failing to remember to refer to the savings part of my 'plan' as 'my savings jar', I'm convinced that I must have gone horribly wrong when I filled in the pre-printed mandate that IF had sent me so that they could collect my regular monthly deposit from my other bank account. Because nothing happened. And nothing kept on happening until I got a phone call a few weeks later telling me that it wasn't possible to pay into my savings jar by direct debit and suggesting that I set up a standing order instead.

This was easier said than done since IF seemed to have decided that I couldn't be trusted with the account number and sort code for my savings 'jar'. But it turned out that the man from the call centre was as bad as me at understanding the new way of banking because a couple of hours later, someone else rang to tell me that I had been misinformed and that IF 'was not indemnified to accept standing orders'.

I gave up on my savings account after that and turned my attention to the mortgage. After a flurry of activity in the first week, six weeks had gone by without us hearing a thing. Three phone calls later, a person from the mortgage team rang back to say that they had been having a few problems with their processing but that a mortgage offer would be along shortly. It duly arrived a fortnight later.

About this time it dawned on me that maybe I wasn't to blame for all the problems (these are the edited highlights). But I was wrong about that too. It certainly wasn't IF's fault that my credit card bill didn't get paid even though there was enough money in the account to cover the direct debit. According to the call centre staff, it was the Co-operative Bank's fault for getting the account number wrong (they hadn't).

So if it wasn't that, the reason the direct debit had been bounced - resulting in a late payment fee of £15 and interest of £30.07 - was that they didn't have the mandate. I calmly explained that this wasn't how the direct debiting system worked, but they weren't having any of it. Then I lost my temper.

In April we decided to give up on Unintelligent Finance. But we couldn't shake them off. In May, we got another mortgage offer, then another in June, closely followed by another three. These have dried up now, as have the savings account statements which we carried on getting four months after closing the account. We're still getting current account statements - which is odd because I could have sworn I closed the account a year ago. My mistake.

It seemed only fair to ask for IF's reaction to my sorry tale and I'm pleased to report that I was right about one thing - it was all my fault. Would I have had a better experience if I'd waited until they'd got over their teething problems? I'd like to think so and IF did say they'd made a lot of changes since I was last in contact with them. But somehow, I have my doubts.