Please give your feedback on personal current accounts

TonySharp

smala01 wrote: »

I have had a nigthmare week trying to understand what interest i'm getting on all of my accounts. On some occasions even the call center operator has no idea!

1) Statements (online / paper) should show the interest rate.

2) Statements should show the exact name of the product so you actually have a chance of cross referencing your account to the terms and conditions.

Andy

Too right. Every time a bank tells you how much money you have, whether on paper or on the web it should be mandatory that it also tells you how much interest that money is earning there and then alongside it. I have wasted hours and hours trying to find out what my interest rates were. Alliance and Leicester is the worst 'cos they have loads of different interest rates for the same name of account depending when you opened the account - and I don't know that off-hand either.
Also electronic money payments i.e. out of your account in on-line banking should be same day. No excuse for them hanging on to your money. I have frequently had my money go missing when being transferred within the same bank though I always complain to the chief exec. when this happens. At least it cost them the cost of dealing with a complaint.

fruugal

Suggestions are from personal experience, both has having been working in a bank and as a customer.

Control
There are problems of security with all banks. These are worst with unsolicited calls from the bank to the customer. The BBA guidelines state that the banks must have a system in place in which it can be identified to the customer without verifying the customer's identity. Most of them don't. We have had id fraud attempts and are told not to take calls from people who cannot identify themselves without using customer data. The failure of the banks on this makes it very difficult for us to manage our accounts. Currently we have been told by police not to use internet banking or divulge any of our data even our address etc unless we know the person calling. The banks should be compelled to set up a system following the BBA guidelines.

For control of money it would be helpful if the bank notified the customer by any agreed means of communication of any potential charges liability in advance so that customers could move money or negotiate prior to incurring them.

Clarity
Charges and options should be notified to the customer one or two calendar months in advance so that the customer can plan and cover any charges in their plan. Options as to how to have the same facilities available but a different rates and charges, should be notified so that the customer can do the best with their money.

Responsibility
Both the bank and the customer must be responsible. However, when a customer has prior knowledge of a change in their circumstances then the bank should sit down with them and see how best to manage it, change accounts, etc so that the customer is not penalised at a time when they have been beset with a medical problem or change of circumstances like a loss of work. Charging customers who are short of work the highest rates will almost guarantee that they cannot make ends meet..

Hope the OFT can do something. Does it have any teeth?

tailhook

I know cheques are going to be phased out but I am one of the few who still gets paid in this way. It's really annoying when it takes 3 working days minimum to clear which can be 6 days over a bank holiday, please speed up cheque clearing. They do in Norway.

MakeitgoRIGHT

Banks and Credit Cards:

I would like to see banks offer a service where a customer who has completed all the security checks and logs onto their account (ie it is definately them, per the checks) can pull a credit card payment into their account. ie someone wants to pay them for something....they get their details and log onto their bank's website and enter them there, with the agreed sum, and prestor! the sum gets transferred.

Every shop does this, almost, but the banks do not want to have money coming in in this way.

Yes someone could steal money that way by debbiting the card several times or for a larger sum, but the credit card would halt payments and the thief is instantly identified for the cops to call around. I don't see that as a problem.

leemack

The two main issues I have apart from charges of course is

1) 'ringfencing of money'

At the moment when I purchase something on line on my debit card, this money is ringfenced for a period of time which appears to range from 2 days to 5 days. If the proof of purchase has not been produced by the store within this time the money is then released back into the bank account. But the store has (I think) 6 months to produce this proof of purchase! So four months down the line, I've forgotten about the transaction and the money disappears from my account, making me overdrawn because I wasn't expecting it.

Stores should have a much shorter period of time to produce proof of purchase - one or two weeks seems reasonable. The money should be ringfenced for the whole period. If the store has not produced the proof of purchase within the specified time, they lose their right to the payment from the bank. Stores should take responsilibity for their accounting too.

On the issue of ringfencing, I have had a situation recently where the on line shopping order had been put through even though the store had no intention of delivering it due to the snow. The money was then ringfenced for 5 days, I had no access to it. Luckily I had enough money to go and buy food from another store. Had I been a person on a low income, I might have had no money to buy food for five days. There should be a way to get this money released back into your bank account in these type of situations.

2) Items should appear on your bank account in the order that the transactions are carried out, and not the order that's most profitable to the bank. Charges should appear on your account at the beginning of day specified that they will be taken and not when the accounts update on the following day. If it is applied on update on the following day then it should appear on your account for the following day.

24 hour banking should mean 24 hour banking, with most transactions computerised there should be no excuse for banks hiding behind the old 'it was after close of business' excuse especially when this invariably means more money by way of charges for them. Transactions in the order the computer carries them out, and in the order they appear on on line banking screens, there should not be a difference.

3guesses

Switching (transferring) your bank account from one provider to another should be completely transparent. It should operate in exactly the same way as porting a mobile phone number; in other words, the sort code and account number should stay the same (the sort code will therefore simply indicate the bank where the account was originally opened). It then just becomes a matter of having some sort of central database which records where each account (identified by the sort code and account number) is held (ie at which bank and branch). All payments, direct debits, etc then get presented to the correct institution (courtesy of this central database) for processing. SIMPLES! No need to go around updating ALL the details on all the various payments, etc which (a) takes time, (b) creates the opportunity for error, and (c) presents the risk of some being forgotten.

I don't know why nobody has thought of this before. Maybe I'm just some sort of genius.

BTW this process could also be applied to the transfer of other accounts, eg. Cash ISAs (how painful such a simple process as that can be...)

(EDIT) One benefit of such a simple process for transferring accounts would be that customers would be much less reluctant to do so; therefore many more would switch thereby prompting the banks to clean up their acts. Voting with your feet is always pretty powerful.

bonzer

Nothing really unique, but just to show support:

1) Show all interest rates that apply to the accounts you personally hold online instead of wading through massive confusing tables.
2) Get on with implementing "faster" payments. Half the banks don't seem to have it yet and some only in one direction.
3) If requested by the customer, require them to notify you by e-mail when interest rates change, immediately that they change and not "within 30 days".
4) Require them to better highlight terms and conditions changes (in English) insted of sending a repeat of the full terms and conditions encoded in legalese with little indication as to what has changed.

Team_Twister

I agree with all the other comments about the time taken to move money between accounts, etc - the banks must generate huge profits from having our cash in their pockets for free.

But also, as owner of a (very) small business, I object to paying what I think are unfair bank charges for everyday transactions - all of which would be entirely free on my personal current account.

dumbledor

If you go in to over draft and the money is paid in to your account before the end of that day a charge of £ 35 is day light robbery :money:

sandra21_2

Why can banks take money they have decided that you owe them direct from the bank account. You have a bill from anyone else and pay it by a particular date, why do the banks have different rules and remove money from your account (even if there is not the funds available to do so). We should receive a bill from the bank of what is owed, and a payment date to clear it, or sort out a payment plan.