Still using the Halifax Reward Account, without the rewards?

Don80 wrote: »

Yes, you can pay from any bank. I have credit cards but not with the banks I use (Bank of Scotland and TSB). You can usually ask for the payment date to be changed to a date that would suit you if that helps. Remember, if you pay too close to the DD date you might end up paying twice if the DD has been requested already!

I did this a couple of years ago when my work changed their payment dates, and it was easy (Sky, credit cards all ok). If you want to pay early, you can usually do that using payment details you'd find on the statement or FD online banking. You need the sort code and account number, and usually use your card number as the reference. It can be saved so you would only need to set it up once.

That would mean all your banking would be with FD

:-)

It's good to know that I can pay from my First Direct account then! I did have the FD Gold card for a few months for the incentive, and even though that was with the same bank, I used to pay that by doing a transfer like how everyone has explained on here :j

Say I wanted to keep my Halifax current account open though, as a spare account, but Halifax be alright with this even though I'm not really having their preferred income/outgoings for a reward account? As I mentioned above, I've read a lot on here over this last year about how Halifax/LBG have closed people's accounts down if they're not using them as regularly as they'd like

Don80 wrote: »

Hi

As far as I know you would just not get the reward.

I think the closing issue was to do with people using the accounts purely for savings, not just not using them. I'm still confused by that, someone I know works for a bank and said that it's usually using the account in an illegal way, or something like using a personal account for business purposes. Perhaps that would be a breach of the "spirit" of the T&Cs? I'm not sure as it's usually the letter of the T&Cs that count.

They can suspend your account after 12 months if they think you don't want it, the T&Cs say "We may suspend an account, benefit or service if we think you don’t want it any more because you have not used it for 12 months, or if you are no longer eligible for it. We will give you two months’ notice in writing before doing so."

Maybe these people weren't using it then. I know my grandad got the Clarity card early last year but then didn't use it, and they sent him a letter about 12 months later saying if he didn't use it then they'd close it down. I do deem that side of things fair though for anybody who isn't using their accounts, why keep accounts open if a person isn't using them? It just wastes space on their databases and things. Although my grandad did visit a branch at one point and they told him to just buy a coffee somewhere with it and they probably wouldn't bother him after that about not using the card.

Anyway, I think he did use it on his recent visit to Spain.

Although I remember my ex girlfriend, I'd got her to sign up for a Halifax account to claim the incentive, and she was going to switch and stay with them anyway. She went into branch, showed proof of address and then they kept getting back to her saying she needed to come in and show it again, and again. Eventually they opened her account, sent her card and everything and a few weeks later wrote her a letter saying if she didn't prove her address in branch, they'd close her account down. She just let them close it after that, absolute waste of time. She had valid documents to prove her address.

Lloyds did a similar thing to me a few years ago when I wanted to open an account with them, but I did later discover there was a technical problem between my online application, and what was going through on their end. The automated address generator when you put your postcode in wasn't creating it properly. But I checked this on her application and all was normal.

I guess Halifax don't want many people as customers :rotfl: