Student/graduate account transfer- leaving Lloyds

Catwoozle

Hi,
After 15 years of being a Lloyds customer, I have had enough of regular mistakes which cost me time and money. The most recent being cancelling my student account whilst still a student and charging me interest and fees on a £2000 overdraft for the last 4 months, pushing me further into debt having only just secured a postgrad job. Their internet banking site has lost 3 recent transfer payments this week. A manager at my local branch has just told me that he can't do anything about it, but to call 2 numbers; one of which transferred me without telling me, then told me that they would call me back in 2 hours, I am still waiting. I just thought I would share this information for anyone who might convince me to stay with Lloyds!

I am looking for a bank who are fairly reliable and who don't pass the buck (pun not intended!), as well as having good rates of interest. My current services from Lloyds are: Student account, £2k interest free overdraft, which will reduce to £1.5k next June (theoretically!). Current account, a spare which I try to use for savings. Graduate loan, at 7.5%, 4K remaining, I can top this one up with extra every month. And a credit card which is interest free until the end of oct and has £850. It would be good to have at least the graduate account and loan in one place, if not all.

To be honest I don't know where to start looking. I'm based in Glasgow so if it's a bank with branches they need to operate in Scotland, HSC & Barclays are limited here. RBS have said they can help me transfer the lot with pretty much the same rates; is there a thread which maybe rates the banks as to their performance, reliability and proffesionalism as well as their offers? Also any suggestions as to things I need to watch out for when leaving Lloyds?

Thanks for your time, any help gratefully received, even suggestions to help stop the steam from coming out of my ears!

Catwoozle

ldn-100

The graduate loan from Lloyds is quite a good deal. Taking it out requires you having a student/graduate current account at the time. You might want to see if you can leave that account with LTSB and move your other accounts elsewhere. There is only so much a bank can get wrong with a loan, but a current account is a whole other story of course.

I am trying to move my student account from NatWest to RBS at the moment as they have more generous limits for student overdrafts.

I've had accounts with Halifax and Abbey, but they lasted less than a month each for poor service. I would not recommend either.

Generally, I would advise having your accounts and products spread out over as many providers as needed (to get the best deals). This way if one offers unacceptably poor service again, it is easy to move away from them.

Catwoozle

Thanks, for your advice. I may stick with Lloyds for the loan, but would rather not have anything more to do with them. I have had a small refund, but nothing near the amount they owe me, no appology, no compensation even when I said I was leaving. I have got the status back on my student account, but the intrest free limit has been reduced by £500, so if I were to stay I will be paying charges on that until I can clear it. A bit of greed and lack of joined up thinking as I will now be leaving before my 1st paycheck! Good luck with RBS, I think I will head there too.