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

moor426

nearlyrich wrote:

I have 3 x monthly salary O/D facility with FD and they are not changing current arangements, it costs pennies to go O/D, I have never had a bad CS experience with them and I'm staying.

The Overdraft arrangements are changing slightly. The fee for arranging an overdraft was 1.5%. it will be a flat fee of £25 from February 2007. That means if you have an overdraft arrangement of more than £500 (the standard amount they give) but less than approx £1650, you will pay more for the arrangement. I queried this today as I was not sure what would happen on renewal.

nearlyrich

moor426 wrote:

The Overdraft arrangements are changing slightly. The fee for arranging an overdraft was 1.5%. it will be a flat fee of £25 from February 2007. That means if you have an overdraft arrangement of more than £500 (the standard amount they give) but less than approx £1650, you will pay more for the arrangement. I queried this today as I was not sure what would happen on renewal.

I got a letter the other day that states my arrangements are not going to be changed unless I request a change so I will keep the large O/D facility just in case and carry on paying peanuts for the service.;)

Giselle2

moor426 wrote:

The Overdraft arrangements are changing slightly. The fee for arranging an overdraft was 1.5%. it will be a flat fee of £25 from February 2007. That means if you have an overdraft arrangement of more than £500 (the standard amount they give) but less than approx £1650, you will pay more for the arrangement. I queried this today as I was not sure what would happen on renewal.

The previous 1.5% overdraft arrangement fee was always subject to a minimum charge any way. Whats really new with the changes is the 'informal' request to increase your OD facility. This arrangement fee will be charged when you overstep your agreed OD limit by mistake if the bank decide to allow the debits. It looks like a replacement for the penalty charges to me. Perhaps because an arrangement fee can't be challenged in court as an illegal penalty charge. I dunno.

moneymode

peter999 wrote:

Are you being paid to answer these queries ??
.

Dont be so stupid! Any of my posts are my opinion and yeah they have all been for FD so far but if I didnt agree with something they were doing then I would not hesitate in saying so on here either. It just so happens that I agree with what they are doing. As has been said before by many you have choices if you are affected by the charge - either accept it, open another product to avoid it or move elsewhere. If you are not affected by it but you still want to close your a/c on principle then do that if you feel that is best for you.


Pretty straightforward really

Lazy_Runner

I am in two minds about leaving FD. I am fortunate that I earn enough that I won't be penalised, and also I have a number of other products with them which are further reasons I won't be penalised.

However I am not sure about the way they are going to charge for overdraft facilities. If I find I am going to be charged for the standard £500 then I will move (probably).

However my inertia is due to remembering how bad the other banks were. I was with NatWest for a while and they were all about sell sell sell!!! I went into a branch to pay a cheque, queried something and I got the sales spiel about something or another.

I loved being with Midland and had a personal account manager, even as a student. However in the great re-organisations in the 90's, my account manager was made redundant. The shock of no longer having somebody who said Yes or helped me sort out my financial problems made me leave Midland.

So in short I like FD because they don't try and sell me something everytime I call and there are staff who will sort out my problem there and then or at least take responsibility for it and get things sorted.

lswwong

Not sure if this might be useful to anyone, but I have HSBC shares and just had a telephone conversation with FD who indicated that HSBC shareholders who are FD customers are exempt from the monthly charge.

Operator indicated that the shareholding info (HSBC Holdings Plc- "HSBA") has already been (supposedly?) cross-checked against FD's customer base. Not really sure about this ... no disrespect to the operator.

I think I will just hang in there and see how things pan out going forward.

MORPH3US

I still got my weekly account text message this morning even though my account should have been closed....

Anyone else had this happen?!?!

M

nollag2006

I still get offered home insurance, credit cards, etc even though I tell them I don't want or need this nonsense.

Perhaps if they didn't spend so much time and money sending out junk mail to people who don't need or want it, they wouldn't need to penalise low earners !!!

nollag2006

CopperPlate wrote:

Better rates, lower charges...

0870/0845 numbers..."press 1 for...", dreadful messaging facility, worse customer service. Enjoy!

You can call A&L for free on 0800 068 8638 then press 2 to go through to the current accounts dept.

Why pay for a call to First Direct, when you can get better rates, and lower charges elsewhere ?

Enjoy !

CopperPlate_2

Better rates, okay. Lower charges - doesn't affect me (thankfully). But if something goes wrong, I'm happy to have sacrificed the few extra pounds a year I'd make on my current account balance to make sure that the person I spoke to didn't fob me off, give me duff information, or just didn't bother their backside to do anything for me. I asked A&L to send me a form months ago - still waiting. No-one in their branch had heard of it - their secure messaging was a waste of time; might as well emailed a Martian for all the good it did.

Yes, good headline rates are one thing, but when it's not backed up by decent customer service, it's not worth much in the long run.