Joint Bank Account - Which one?

gmaciver

As the title says we're looking for a joint account to use for paying all the house bills. Does anyone have any recommendations or ones to avoid? We'll be paying money into the account rather than getting our wages paid in directly.

Any tips are appreciated!

Rafter

Who do you both bank with?

Makes sense to keep the account with the same banks because then you get instant transfer between accounts and no 3 day delays when making the transfers.

Online account servicing might also be useful.

Then it boils down to customer service versus incentives and whether there are any restrictions on the account if you don't pay your salary into it.

Ones worth thinking about:

First direct - £100 incentive for opening but at least 1 salary of £1500 per month may need to be transferred. Good if one of you is already with HSBC?

Nationwide - good for holidays - no commission or charges on debit card when used in EU and low charges for use elsewhere.

Smile - Part of co-op. Ethical - always gets good customer service ratings

Halifax/Alliance & Leicester - both quite aggressive at gettting new customers - so you might get a good introductory deal - you may have to move every year though once the intro offer is diluted.

R.

rb10

Rafter wrote: »

Halifax/Alliance & Leicester - both quite aggressive at gettting new customers - so you might get a good introductory deal - you may have to move every year though once the intro offer is diluted.

It looks like there's a typo there ... do you mean Abbey/A&L and not Halifax, as Abbey fit the description.

Halifax have an ongoing good offer where you get £5 every month (after tax, it's £6.25 gross) regardless of your balance, but only if you pay in £1k or more in the previous month, so it depends on whether you'd pay in that much.

Dinah93

Avoid A & L like the plague, they have collossal charges for going overdrawn (got charged £70 for going £1.32 over and not realising for a week) and when I split up with my ex you need both signitures to close the account, so he just emptied it and I couldn't take my name off even if I paid off the whole ammount he had taken it overdrawn by, which has decimated my credit rating. I also sent them a letter four times before they actually 'received' it, despite sending it by recorded delivery which confirmed it arrived every single time. Worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with.