Alliance & Leicester £100 for changing being sneaky

I second the negative comments about A&L. I too opened one of their accounts and now can't wait to switch. You'll probably be fine if you never have reason to contact their customer service, but I pity you if you do. Compared to other banks they're nothing but "legal" scam artists.

I'm an A&L customer and the only reason aside from the £100 I signed up was in the hope I might get a debit card, rather than an electron card (in debt management).

I did, but it doesn't work at card payment points that run through payments at end of day as they're not live. It has an electron chip they just don't like you knowing that.

Anyhoo, all I can say is steer clear of these muppets.
Their customer services are appalling and their faster payments limit is £250 which they don't exactly advertise either - which is a pain in the butt quite frankly. Additionally, yes - online banking shows you your balance and items coming out - but a day later - so you're always a day behind.

If I could go elsewhere - I would. That's my 2 pennies worth

hth,
pippitypip

Am i the only one getting a good service? - so far!

katenut wrote: »

me too - i've had fantastic service so far!! there was even some confusion over my direct debit switching day,

How did you manage to pin them down to a day? It would have made it so much simpler if I'd known when things were going to transfer. They just told me 'sometime next month'.

Hiya-

I applied for a premier account the weekend before the nov 2009 deadlone. I was quite nervous about the whole procedure and after I applied online and before committing to transferring DDs and salary I went to my local branch and discussed my concerns with a person there. She also verified and confirmed with the switching servcie that I will qualify for the £100 before I went ahead. She said to contact her if I don't get the£100. I also contacting my HR regarding the salary change. I found myself spending time (3 times-approx hour total) in a branch near my work discussing the switching process with the switching team. The DD letters finally went out on 29th Dec after some delay.

Nov pay went to A&L account
£100 deposited in my account early Jan
8/9 DD's transferred in time for Jan salary pay
Today 1 DD outstanding-not set up in new account but cancelled in old account (lucky this wasn't my mortgage)

I don't think I'll stay with this bank as I don't like the way the on-line statements are set out. I have complained about this. It's a weird system that is confusing. The account number system is also confusing with the extra digit at the beginning. The sortcode is not on the card.

My feeling is that I was made to earn the £100 for managing the whole process to ensure that hiccups were kept to minimum. i prob spent 2hrs total doing this. £50 an hour is not too bad.

My advice is that one should keep money in both accounts during the DD transfer process. This totalled approx £1250 for me and I didn't have these funds readily available.

To the original poster: don't quite give up yet-go to a branch and select someone in the team that cares and is likely to help you. Take all your papework and express the time you've already spent. Tell them you want to stay with them for any reason you can make up but would have to leave if this doesn't get resolved. Goodluck!!