Alliance and Leicester Premier Account - Something to keep in mind

geejaybee

Until last month I had a LLoydsTSB Platinum joint a/c. I wasnt using many of the "benefits" so I switched to the Alliance and Leicester Premier Account which gave some of the benfits for free (Travel Ins).
Apart from the cost I have to say LLoydsTSB were brilliant in every respect and I am now starting to have concerns about the A&L.
Today I went into a branch to try and withdraw £1500 (a/c bal in xs of £3500) only to be told I could only have £250 unless I gave advanced notice and that the branch (Major City Centre btw) does not hold much cash (£15K per day!!!). This evening I rang customer services (premier pay line!) to query only to have it confirmed that £250 per day from any source is your lot. I said that seems rather odd for a current bank account only to be told that A&L are not a bank. So there you have it - a current "bank account" with an orgaisation owned by a bank but who are not a bank and from whom you cannot get more than £250 per day of your money.
I think I'll need to keep my (now free) lloyds bank classic a/c going and feed it from the A&L a/c.

Moan over

freeasabird

I was told that you can get up to £500 over the counter and £250.00 from the cash machine. Their terms and conditions for the premier account say that you cannot take out less than £250.00 over the counter. It all sounds a bit confusing but only being able to take out £250.00 sounds very harsh.

http://www.alliance-leicester.co.uk/customer-service/pdfs/Current-Account-terms-and-conditions.pdf

Snooze

Can't speak for what the actual T&Cs are about withdrawing large amounts without notice, but as a long term PD account holder who regularly moves large amounts of cash in and out of the account, all you need to do is give them a quick tinkle on the freephone number to customer services and ask them to contact your local PO or branch to make a withdrawal for whatever amount you want and after they make a quick phonecall to them to make sure they've got the funds, it's all sorted out in a couple of mins.

I wouldn't write them off just on that one experience. You assumed they'd be the same as Lloyds but it isn't their fault that you assumed wrong about how they (should) work. I've been with them since the Girobank days and I can't really fault them to be honest.

Rob

Kavanne

I had to give advance notice to withdraw £1000 from halifax.... I thought in advance and phoned them to query... only took 2 mins to log request.... not hard...

D_Man_3

I wanted to withdraw £1000 once so called ahead just to be safe as there's no branch in my town. They called my local Post Office to see if they had the funds and told them I'd be coming in for it.

I wouldn't have got it from the branch though.

EarthBoy

geejaybee wrote: »

.... I said that seems rather odd for a current bank account only to be told that A&L are not a bank. ...

The FSA might have something to say about that. A&L are certainly registered as a bank. Perhaps they meant that they are not a real bank, just a poxy little pretend bank?

Louba

Hi, I thought I would add a little of my experience with A&L to the thread by way of warning if anyone is thinking of changing to the rpemier account. Sorry it's a bit of a ramble!

I opened an account with A&L in October and opted to us their switching service. Towards the end of November I got a statement from my credit card company to say that my direct debit for the minimum payment had been rejected. It wasn't for alot of money and I got it paid by the payment date so I wasn't too worried but wanted to query it with A&L anyway. I was told that instructiosn to transfer the account had been sent to M&S but they hadn't actioned it. I questioned this again as by my reckoning this would have meant that it would have come off the old account and was told that M&S must have cancelled it but not set up new instructions.

I was about to write it off to experience when I noticed that my mortgage was not on the list of direct debits even though it was due in two days. Again I was tolf it hadn't transferred. I spoke to my lender who said it was still set up for the old account and could not be changed. Back to A&L to transfer funds to the old account to cover the mortgage. I was assured that as the lender had not instructed the trasnfer that it would come out the old account and the direct debit from the old account would nto have been cancelled unless I had done it. This is where it gets really annoying - on the morning the payment was due to go out the old account it didn't, the old bank said the instruction had been cancelled that morning so it couldn't be paid. I ended up paying the mortgage by switch. All parties said they didn't cancel it. To make matters worse the instruction to transfer still hadn't been actioned by mid December when I arranged for it to be transferred myself.

My main issue is that if I hadn't discovered by accident that the dd hadn't transferred I would have defaulted on my mortage. Each time to I spoke to the lender it took about 20 minutes to get through so I don't really feel that i got much from the premier switching service or that it was worth the £100 joining bonus. The staff I spoke to were very helpful but the problem seems to be that their system doesn't protect you from this happening so you can't take it for granted that everythign has moved accross. Might just be an isolated incident though!

the182guy

£250 a day limit is a joke tbh. A couple of years ago when I was buying a car, halifax let me have £900 a day, but never mentioned anything about notifying them, so I had to go back each day.

The amount of problems detailed on this forum about A&L is endless.

I did consider going with this account because of the bonus but stuck with halifax and just upgraded to the reward account.

It says it all really... A&L have to pay people £150 (inc £50 cashback) to switch to them, it must be bad.

BASFORDLAD

Its because they are not a clearing bank so do not hold the funds like larger banks such as co-op/barclays do.

noh

BASFORDLAD wrote: »

Its because they are not a clearing bank so do not hold the funds like larger banks such as co-op/barclays do.

I believe they are a clearing bank

http://www.apacs.org.uk/uk_payment_schemes/cheque_credit_clearing.html

But they do not hold the funds because they do not have the facilities to do so unlike the older banks.

Nigel

apt

Kavanne wrote: »

I had to give advance notice to withdraw £1000 from halifax.... I thought in advance and phoned them to query... only took 2 mins to log request.... not hard...

You can get £1200 cash a day from a Halifax branch counter on top of £300 from the ATM without notice. Halifax agencies have a lower £600 limit.