Alliance & Leicester - Faster Payment

ALIBOBSY

I sent £150 then £100 then £100 from my A & L savings account to the same current account today, no problems. I did this as I wasn't sure of the limits and had previously had problems trying to transfer £300 in one lot a few months ago.
Wonder if the limit overall has gone up but still with individual amounts limited?

ali x

LM123

Grrr, have only just found out, the hard way of course, that A&L have a £250 limit to their FP service. Also, they can change this at any given time without any notification to us, the user/customer - for "security" reasons!

Basically, this means that you should NEVER make a payment on, or within 4 days of, a due date; as, if they happen to have changed their limit in the meantime, you have no comeback.

For paying my Tesco visa card balance off in full I have been charged £45.05 in total as the payment, due on the 29th, did not arrive until the 1st, though I sent it on the 27th thinking it would be there within a couple of hours. Neither A&L nor Tesco (understanably) wish to refund my charges. Ho-hum...

97trophy

Move bank.;)

exel1966

LemonTree wrote: »

Does anyone else also experience difficulties with A&L concerning faster payments?

Thanks.

Nope, the £250 limit is well known on MSE and has been reported on this forum dozens of times before.

Most banks have limitations as to how much, it varies greatly and can change on a weekly basis per institution, some can be done via phone only and not online. AFAIK HSBC have the highest limit fo FP's - £10K.

a&akay

I've been OK with the process I reported on post 9 up till now (Sep), but only my faster payment of £250 to Barclays went immediately. The one to NatWest went the next day, presumably instantly but a day later. They therefore appear to have closed this avenue, but the payments were consecutive days ie not the usual BACS delay.

premierfella

My experience (around a month ago) was that A&L's process held £250 payments to other accounts after the first request on the day (which automatically went via Faster Payments). I got a phone call the first day I tried to do multiple £250 payments to other accounts, which were then released after the phone call. On subsequent days, the multiple payments were held but released the same day without the phone call.

It may be that your payment was simply held overnight because of this apparent human intervention in the payment releasing process.

LemonTree_3

To its second anniversary I need to bring up this thread up again:

Okay, for my understanding, a payment up to £250 for each single payee A+L processes as "faster payment".
Yesterday I made two payments, each of £249, to two different payees. The first one got through as faster payment (labelled as "BILL PAYMENT VIA FASTER PAYMENT TO...") on my online account statement. Whereas the second payment is presumably still in process ( (labelled as "BILL PAYMENT TO...") as I'm still waiting for the money.

Today, I made another payment of £249 to another payee. This transaction hasn't gone through as faster payment either. It is processed as standard bill payment.

In short, I made three payments (each of £249) to three different accounts. Only one went through as faster payment, the other two are still in process.

In the past two years I had no problem with this - all £249 transactions went through as faster payment.

Has someone an explanation? Has this something to do with A+L being taken over by Santander?

pfpf

FP is one thing but why do A&L to A&L payments take upto 3 days? (including sending day).

surely internals should be instant?

any information on this?

newbuilder

Hello,

When I contacted them it was explained as follows:

Maximum DAILY faster payment is £300. So if you send apayment of £250 then another as £50 you are okay but if the second is £51 this will result in the latter transaction going through the BACS system.

Any new bills set up is sent as a BACS (or bill) payment first time round.

sharkei

Another feature of faster payments I have discovered is that a day is a period of 24 hours, so if you send a FP at 9:00pm one day you can't send another one as an FP until 9:01pm the following day. If you send it earlier, it goes through the BACS system (3-4 days).

I agree with other members, you wouldn't bank with A&L or Santander if it was for good service!!