Avoid First Direct - They are gonna charge all customers £10!

Paul_Herring

old_goat wrote:

In order to benefit from this or even break even you need to have most or all of your finances with First Direct in order to cultivate a "mutually beneficial customer relationship"

Is that a direct quote? Shocking :eek:

No-one should have all their financial products with the same company, let alone have that company as a bank! Lets see...

http://firstdirect.com/rates/current.shtml

Bank Account Credit interest
All credit balances: 2.00%AER 1.98%Gross 1.58%Net

LTSB 4.00% AER 3.93% Gross

mini cash e-ISA
and then from 1 September 2006 (variable) 4.00%AER 3.93%Gross

NS ISA - 5.05%

e-Savings Account
£1 - £500,000 4.75%AER 4.65%Gross 3.72%Net

ICICI - 5.03%Gross, 5.15%AER.


It's not as if FD have a reasonable set of financial products to begin with.

nbbradshaw

Ok so it looks like the information is correct. After being a loyal customer for 10 yrs I'm leaving. Maybe if the marketing department spent less time, energy and money sending me junk post mail, they would save over £10 a month for every customer!!!

EagerLearner

Nbradshaw... you can actually ask them to not send you junk mail... not that it matters if you're leaving...

Worth all FD customers calling up and / or e-mailing FD re the charges so that there's some attention focused on the fact that customers do not want it.

Everyone thinking about leaving, get calling them before you leave FD - it may be that as a result they don't do it - MSE action does work!

ffacoffipawb

Wel, if they introduce this charge, I will move everything to my backup account - Nationwide Flexaccount.

The significant savings I have in their e-savings will go into the Nationwide account of a similar name.

The effort of moving direct debits is a pain, but if it saves me £120 a year well so be it.

nbbradshaw

EagerLearner, any update from your 2 contacts?

Regards
Nigel

EagerLearner

Hi nbbradshaw - nope, they weren't going to call me back though but both said they would check out this here website... so maybe something will get posted on here explaining why they think it will be a good idea to charge £120 per year for their services to avoid mass exodus of money-aware MSER's...

CopperPlate_2

Well, I've just gone against the flow of opinion here and opened a current account with FD through Quidco. Bag myself £45 and an account I'm happy with. If they do go ahead with charging, I'll have until January to move again. FD are good, but not worth paying for when another provider will do it for free. At least as a customer I'd be in a position to send them my views as opposed to just being another voice in the tide of public protest... :rolleyes:

nbbradshaw

Growing opportunities in China, India and other emerging markets have helped propel global banking giant HSBC to an 18% surge in half-year profits.

Pre-tax profits came in at $12.5bn (£6.7bn) - beating forecasts.

So why do they want £120 per customer???

westernpromise

nbbradshaw wrote:

Growing opportunities in China, India and other emerging markets have helped propel global banking giant HSBC to an 18% surge in half-year profits.

Pre-tax profits came in at $12.5bn (£6.7bn) - beating forecasts.

So why do they want £120 per customer???

Because it's bad business economics to allow one segment to cross-subsidise another?

nbbradshaw

Westernpromise, this is not about cross subsidising, they were already making £5.7bn before the 'surge'.