Alliance & Leicester Esaver closing problem

Brummygold

Two weeks ago i phoned Alliance & Leicester up to close an esaver account i have held for about a year as the interest rate is now rubbish. I asked for the balance to be transferred to my recently opened a&l premier current account but the woman on the phone said it would have to be sent to my nominated account which is my old current account with Llloyds Tsb. Anyway two weeks have passed and i checked my online statement yesterday to find the money is still in the esaver. So i tried the manual transfer online but it could not perform the request? I have had no contact from a&l so assumed everything was being sorted. Surely it dont take two weeks to transfer money. If there was a problem with the process then i would of expected some form of contact from a&l but have heard nothing. If the money hasnt moved by monday i will be phoning them up to get this dealt with. I am not happy with this service and am seriously considering moving all my money from this bank including my current account. I just wondered if anyone had any ideas why the money has not been transferred.

butterflymum

No excuse for them not sorting things for you, but just thought I'd suggest, could they not have changed your nominated account to the A & L Current A/C you say you also hold, or did you not want this?

Milarky

butterflymum wrote: »

No excuse for them not sorting things for you, but just thought I'd suggest, could they not have changed your nominated account to the A & L Current A/C you say you also hold, or did you not want this?

No. It's actually a condition of the e-saver that you cannot amend the 'nominated' account. They advise that if you want to do that you must first close the account and then open a separate one linked (eg) to your A&L current account. I found this 'daft' restriction quite useful as it provided the perfect 'cover' for closing my old account in order to apply for a new e saver when they were offering £20 cashback for this last year

The actual transfer out to LTSB should have only taken about 3 or 4 days (1 day to close the e-saver then the time required to BACS out)

Brummygold

The nominated account could not be changed on the esaver so it had to stay with my old lloyds current account even though i switched all my banking to a&l, silly i know. Maybe this is why the transfer is not going through as i used a&l's so called premier switching service to transfer my salary, direct debits, standings orders etc. Maybe they cancelled the nominated account in the process, i dont know. Either way they are accountable and should of got in contact with me if there was a problem, that is what annoys me most as i could of needed that money by a certain time, luckily i dont but i will still lose interest on the money. Now i will have to phone their awful customer service hotline again. Ill give them the benefit of the doubt and wait till monday.

elektra

I wouldn't bother waiting till Monday, ring today.
Sounds to me as if they didn't initiate closing the account. Maybe they weren't sure you wanted to go ahead when told it would go to your nominated account.

SavingSteve

Agree with elektra, ring today.

The nominated account CANNOT be changed.

But - if you call them will transfer the money to another A&L account, no problem at all. I did that with them the other day, closed an eSaver2 on the phone and transferred into a newly opened OnlineSaver4.

The lady you spoke with two weeks ago was clearly not on the ball.

withnell

Milarky wrote: »

No. It's actually a condition of the e-saver that you cannot amend the 'nominated' account.

They tell you you can't change the nominated account, but if you let them know that you want to change it to an A&L current account, they let you make the transfer - appears instantly on online banking