I was a very happy AIB customer until they introduced charges on personal current accounts at which point I moved to ptsb. When I say happy with AIB I mean in terms of their levels of customer service and their online banking service. I found the staff to be professional and generally easy to deal with.
The move to ptsb was the worst move I ever made. The online banking was fine but the service in my branch was terrible. I raised a few issues within the branch and they never came back to me as promised, there was never anyone available to deal with a motor loan application despite extensive advertising within the branch and worst of all, although it was a joint account, they would insist on speaking to me when they phoned to market savings products although my wife identified herself as the joint account holder.
I also have a complaint lodged with the Data Protection Commissioner regarding their failure to remove us from marketing mailing lists despite several requests and several assurances that they would do so.
As you can imagine I was delighted when AIB reverted to transaction free banking and I didn't think twice about going back to them and leaving my experience of ptsb behind me.
I'm sure there are others out there with horror stories of AIB but in my view when it comes to a comparison of AIB and ptsb there is no contest