Why won't Halifax (HBOS) do 4-weekly standing orders?

margaretclare

My eldest GD was talking about this recently. She banks with HBOS (she calls it Halifax).

She works for a local authority and gets paid 4-weekly. The rent on her council flat, her council tax and her pension contributions gets taken out at source, so that's less for her to worry about. But the other normal bills - gas, electricity, water etc - she pays by standing order. She'd like to pay them 4-weekly, in line with when she gets paid. But Halifax won't do it, they insist on calendar monthly.

My bank - Smile - will do 4-weekly standing orders and I do this, because DH and I receive pension payments 4-weekly, so I understand her problem. Why won't Halifax? Does anyone know?

Milarky

I'm not sure how many other banks offer this either, to be honest, but I think Natiowide has the option for 4 weekly. I'd also expect co-op bank would too (given its errrthee heritage)

Has your GD looked into setting up single payments at four weekly intervals instead? That might work, but I'm no au fais with Halifax banking enough to know. Some banks allow single payments up to 12 months ahead at a time. Halifax may too.

wyebird

They used to be able to when I worked there, but only a branch could key it. The telephone service apparently couldn't....but that is several years ago now!

Mikeyorks

Suspect it's because '4 weekly' tends to be a dying breed - I'm always surprised the State Pension is offered at that frequency as it increases the Admin costs at no visible benefit other than 'I'm used to it'. More historical inertia on the part of the Pension Service than their customers I imagine?

Halifax offer SOs at weekly / monthly / quarterly / half yearly and annually .... so I think they're under the impression they're meeting most customer's needs. But if you want to be in control then you can set up a 'bill payment' and simply tap that to go every 4 weeks? Has the added advantage you can amend the value.

More seriously - she would be much better off paying the utilities by DD. Virtually all offer discounts and it moves the responsibility to them. If you want to retain an element of control .... you just check your online statement on the DD due dates.

Extant

It sounds silly - but they may have an option for "every 28 days". That doesn't always click as "four weeks" in some minds.

margaretclare

Thanks, I'll talk to her again.

I think she just wants things dead simple and it would be easier to match up her outgoings with the 4-weekly salary payments. She has a very busy job, is very hot on 'not getting into arrears with anything' (good for her!) and it would make it easier for her.

Regarding 4-weekly pension payments, we'd actually prefer calendar monthly, but we can deal with it. In fact I was advised some while ago to change to weekly because 'that way you don't get it in arrears'. I tried it, but have never been used to budgeting by the week, DH and I were always paid monthly salary and we get annuity payments monthly now. So I changed back to 4-weekly. We deal with it by putting equal amounts into a separate joint account and all the monthly DDs go out from there, nearly all of them on the 1st of every month.

There are still people who go and draw out all pension money in cash every week, would you believe, but I suspect that they were people who were weekly-paid in cash and can budget by the week because they're used to it.