Useless Alliance & Leicester e-Saver

loveprada

I'm extremely disappointed with A&L but my naivety contributed. I opened a current a/c a couple of years ago and they convinced me to take up one of their savings accounts linked to this. Not only does it have the same rules as the e-saver, i.e. you lose interest for a month if you withdraw but the interest rate has been dire, only I didn't realise for quite some time. I'm so incensed that I'm now in the process of closing my A&L accounts and moving elsewhere out of principle. Also I applied for an e-saver 6 weeks ago and still haven't received anything! I'm moving my savings to Tesco and thankfully did it in time to qualify for the additional 1.5% bonus.

SavingSteve

Question on A&L... I too have opened a Tesco savings account.

What I want to do is, on the 1st, transfer the money from the A&L to Tesco.

My linked account is Cahoot, which doesn't support faster payments, and I don't want to lose days worth of interest making transfers from A&L -> Cahoot -> Tesco, I'd rather cut out the middle step.

As Tesco is not my linked account, so I can't do this transfer online. Does anyone know if it is possible to do this over the phone (i.e. make transfer to a non-linked account)?

YorkshireBoy

SavingSteve wrote: »

Does anyone know if it is possible to do this over the phone (i.e. make transfer to a non-linked account)?

I'd wager the answer is 'no chance'!

A&L won't even let you change the nominated account on their e-savers...you have to close the account and re-apply.

Have you set up the DD between Tesco and Cahoot? If not I suspect you're at the mercy of 2 x BACS transfers...and A&L seem to hang on to your money for a day before releasing it to BACS.

SavingSteve

Yes I have a DD set up between Cahoot and Tesco too.

In theory I could arrange the BACS from A&L to Cahoot on Feb 2nd (1st business day), so funds should get to me by Feb 5th or 6th.

I could pre-empt the funds arrival and set up a DD on Feb 3rd, which should go on Feb 6th from Cahoot to Tesco I suppose, minimising the loss?

YorkshireBoy

SavingSteve wrote: »

Yes I have a DD set up between Cahoot and Tesco too.

Has it been used yet? Reason I ask is that many 'first pulls' take longer than the usual 3 days from initiation. Could mean your cash is sat in Cahoot longer than you'd like?

In theory I could arrange the BACS from A&L to Cahoot on Feb 2nd (1st business day), so funds should get to me by Feb 5th or 6th.

I think Thursday 5th.

I could pre-empt the funds arrival and set up a DD on Feb 3rd, which should go on Feb 6th from Cahoot to Tesco I suppose, minimising the loss?

I'd expect a DD pull initiated on the 3rd to call the funds on the 5th. However, how do Cahoot sort your transactions? Might the DD pull be refused because the A&L funds arrived after it?

SavingSteve

The A&L - Cahoot has been used many times, so expect this to be smooth. So that transaction shouldn't be a problem.

The Cahoot-Tesco has yet to be used, but thanks to your post I think I'll make a £1 transfer today, so at least it has been used once.

Cahoot need funds on the open of play for any DD for that day to be paid out. Based on that I should probably delay initiating the DD pull from Tesco's end until the morning of the 4th.

Thanks so much for your replies!

sjwajw

I have a Tesco 'internet saver' a/c linked to my current a/c. When I opened this a/c Nov 2008 Tesco sent me the sort code & a/c no for this Tesco a/c. If I want to send money to Tesco from ANY a/c I just send an internet transfer to the Tesco sort code & a/c no. It seems to work fine. If you don't have these details for your a/c suggest you ring Tesco & ask for them.

SavingSteve

Thanks sjwajw, not so much the problem of not having Tesco's details. The issue here is that A&L will only allow a transfer out of my eSaver to the linked account I set up when opening the eSaver account, and it is not possible to add or change linked accounts.

withnell

Iconic wrote: »

I cannot understand why they have 11 digit account numbers when every other bank has 8 digits

I'm assuming is a transfer over from their building society days:

Britannia have a 9 digit account number with a similar arrangement with a single account to make all payments into

My Skipton ISA has a 9 digit a/c number, not sure of the paying in arrangements tho

Abbey savings accounts are all served through one paying in sortcode/account no combo

Sure there are many others, but they're the accounts where I have books to hand!

rb10

Iconic wrote: »

I cannot understand why they have 11 digit account numbers when every other bank has 8 digits.

In addition to withnell's ones above, to pay in to many Nationwide savings accounts you use a generic sort code and account number (something like 99999999), and then put the account number in the 'Reference' field.

It does not inspire much confidence when you have to put your account number in the Reference box.

But their computer system is set up to read what's in the reference field, and allocate money to that account. It doesn't make any difference to the way the payment is processed.