Barclays Bank

Very posh high street bank, would have thought you were in a London branch. Staff seem efficient and happy too help, no bad word to say.

Good location, right in the middle of the Reading high street area. This also gives them loads of very direct competition with at least a half dozen other large and small institutions including HSBC, Lloyd’s and Co-​operative.
There are two ATM’s outside (no fees for withdrawals!) and more inside as well as full teller services upstairs and banking associates downstairs. Some sort of BBC «headline news» with captions is running on multiple screens, so there’s some entertainment while waiting.
Opening my account took about 30 minutes, possibly delayed due to my being an American and not having any other banking in the UK. Within a couple of days, I got bombarded by mailed paperwork, explanations, fee schedules and all sorts of crap that I need to read through and decide if it needs to be kept.
I didn’t take a picture as I am sure someone would have thought I was casing the place for a later robbery. (Which I was not, you peanut gallery commenters!)
Barclay’s has a pretty easy-​to-​use Internet banking.