Birmingham Midshires

dudenstumpy

It it just me, or is anyone else having problems with them?. I took the advice offered on ME and opened an easy access internet account at 4.9%. I sent a £10 cheque and awaited my user name and access token which are required for actitvation. I received them, and as I wanted to transfer a large amount of money to them, attempted to become activated right away.
For the past TWO weeks I have been met with...

Sorry, we are unable to process your request at this time.

If you are experiencing a persistent problem, please contact us on 0845 850 0059.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

0845 numbers are only available within the UK. Calls from BT landlines will cost a maximum of 5p per minute. .....


I have phoned, at my expense, the number twice and have emailed them, also. Over the phone I was promiced that it would be sorted and that I would be emailed a new access token. I have had nothing. In the interim, I have discovered that they are owned by the Halifax bank and, given my ongoing dissatisfaction with the Bank of Scotland since Halifax bought them, the level of incompetence shown thus far doesn't really surprise me.

Can anyone advise me the best way to retrieve my tenner?

Craig

Zwicky

Try looking at the thread on Birmingham Midshires:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=184837

You will find some useful information on phone numbers.

I have opened BM accounts recently and had no problems.

mary

Just activated my new account, all happened very smoothly and quickly. Just wanted to save the account on Egg Money Manager, where I see all my other accounts, looks as though you cannot list them. Anyone else encountered this? Nuisance when everything else is all under one roof.

oldandhappy

Mary I have just requested that they add Birmingham Midshires to the 'list' and now I just have to wait to see if they can....

mary

I've tried other accounts in the past, haven't been successful - one was The Derbyshire and I think the other was IF?

pkrnts

I'm also having problems when trying to login (have yet to actually login successfully), receiving the following:
"Your account is currently unavailable, please contact us on 0845 850 0059* to re-instate your account

Please click 'Next' to logoff"

Phoned the number up a week ago, the girl didn't have a clue what the message meant and sent me a new access token via email, she seemed untrained imho. Still the same problem occurs, plus they seem to ignore emails. Bit of a shambles so far.

ffacoffipawb

pkrnts wrote:

I'm also having problems when trying to login (have yet to actually login successfully), receiving the following:
"Your account is currently unavailable, please contact us on 0845 850 0059* to re-instate your account

Please click 'Next' to logoff"

Phoned the number up a week ago, the girl didn't have a clue what the message meant and sent me a new access token via email, she seemed untrained imho. Still the same problem occurs, plus they seem to ignore emails. Bit of a shambles so far.

I get the same message too. Direct debit first payment into this account left my bank on 4th May.

Will give it a week to see if the account becomes available after receipt of this first payment.

If not, I'll close this account. Not a good start anyway.

strawberrylane

We too had the same error message when we tried to activate this account, but I must say that when I phoned the 0845 number to resolve the problem the chap I spoke to was very helpful and emailed a new access token straight away which worked and allowed us to log on. Since then, no problems at all.

Blairweech

Was he called Matt? That was who I spoke to with the same problem, and he said he didn't understand what was wrong, but magically fixed it! It did take 10 days to transfer my deposit though, but apart from that haven't had any problems.

I've set up a standing order from my bank for a regular amount (as opposed to setting up another Direct Debit with BM), but I'm not sure if I did it right.

pkrnts

ffacoffipawb wrote:

I get the same message too. Direct debit first payment into this account left my bank on 4th May.

Will give it a week to see if the account becomes available after receipt of this first payment.

If not, I'll close this account. Not a good start anyway.

Just thought I'd update you, this morning I get an email about resetting my account completely out of the blue (with new access token etc) so I go through the process for a 3rd time and again the message stays.

Phoned up again, this time getting a VERY helpful girl who put me on hold for a couple of minutes to do some checks on the account. Result.. some electronic anti-fraud checks they do when you signup apparently didn't register on their system correctly and therefore my account was put onto auto-hold. She changed some things and asked me to try logging on, it worked! My direct debit is also in there and everything's working fine.

dudenstumpy

After about 5 weeks ( from my original deposit being accepted ) I'm still not activated. An email ( a virtual copy of their first welcoming one ) finally arrived yesterday which gave me a new access token and stated that a new username will be sent to me within 5 days. If this finally manages to get me activated, I'll eat my hat, and will of course update this topic I started.

I'm really glad I "opened" this account with just £10