Alliance & Leicester faster payments

Toe-Jam

Darlosthejackal wrote: »

Hi everyone - it's me again (first post) as I've had more stupidness from A&L on Faster Payments, but at least I have a definitive answer from their CS team now. I quote it below, and although it is pretty much rubbish as a service at least we all know the rules now!
Hope ti helps and puts the matter to bed. Thanks for the responses!

"
Dear .........
Your Account Number:............................
Thank you for highlighting your concerns and giving us the opportunity to investigate the matter.
I understand from your email that you recently tried to make two faster payments at £150.00 each; however, only one payment was sent via faster payment.
I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Faster Payment Method to you.
Where possible payments will be sent via Faster Payments, but this is dependant on both the beneficiary and remitting sort code being part of the Scheme. Also, in recent years the popularity of the Faster Payment process has seen a significant increase. Due to this high demand, not all payments can be sent via Faster Payment. If the payment cannot be sent via Faster Payment it will be sent as a bill payment via BACS.
I would also like to inform you that with an Alliance & Leicester or Santander account, when you are making a one-off payment, a maximum of £300 can be sent via Faster Payment and only one Faster Payment can be sent per day. When sending payments which breach the maximum limit, Santander will automatically route these to be paid via BACS.
With regular Faster Payments, such as a Direct Debit or Standing Orders, the first time the payment is sent it will automatically go via BACS for your own security. However, second and subsequent payments will then be sent via Faster Payment, where possible and the limit for these payments is £1000.00. With these types of payments there is no limit on how many can be sent per day.
After looking in to this matter for you It would seem that the underlying reason as to why only one of your payments was sent via Faster Payment is because only one can be sent per day.
I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you and I can confirm that we are always looking to improve the Faster Payment service were it is possible.
I hope you feel I have offered a fair resolution to the issue you have raised with us. However, if you are not satisfied with my decision, you can refer your complaint to our Central Complaints Department on 0845 600 6014. A leaflet containing further contact details will be sent through the post.
Following this you may still have the final option of referring your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, whose contact details are also contained in the leaflet.
If we do not hear from you within 8 weeks we will consider your complaint closed

"

You can send more than 1 to the same person per day, but your total for the day is £300 to everyone. If you have a saving account you can send another £300 from that per day.

Milarky

Re. their 'reply' it contains some ripe codswallop

"...only one Faster Payment can be sent per day..."

Now that could actually explain it - after all, what else did you 'do wrong'?. But instead they wrap it in non sequiturs like

"in recent years the popularity of the Faster Payment process has seen a significant increase. Due to this high demand, not all payments can be sent via Faster Payment."

And this is obviously a falsie

"I can confirm that we are always looking to improve the Faster Payment service were it is possible."

Milarky

Toe-Jam wrote: »

You can send more than 1 to the same person per day, but your total for the day is £300 to everyone. If you have a saving account you can send another £300 from that per day.

I knew about separate current accounts, and have used this to send 2x£300 in a day, but did not know about 'savings accounts' are you referring to 'e savings' there, because I also have 'plus saver' (ex A&L) and that is limited to internal transfers I believe.

YorkshireBoy

Milarky wrote: »

Re. their 'reply' it contains some ripe codswallop

Here's another one...

Santander_complaints_officer wrote:

"With regular Faster Payments, such as a Direct Debit..."

As far as I'm aware direct debit is not a 'faster payment'...is it?

Sceptic001

Darlosthejackal wrote: »

Also, in recent years the popularity of the Faster Payment process has seen a significant increase. Due to this high demand, not all payments can be sent via Faster Payment. If the payment cannot be sent via Faster Payment it will be sent as a bill payment via BACS.

This significant admission renders the A&L/Santander FP system useless when a payment date is time-critical.

Darlosthejackal wrote: »

I would also like to inform you that with an Alliance & Leicester or Santander account, when you are making a one-off payment, a maximum of £300 can be sent via Faster Payment and only one Faster Payment can be sent per day. When sending payments which breach the maximum limit, Santander will automatically route these to be paid via BACS.
...
After looking in to this matter for you It would seem that the underlying reason as to why only one of your payments was sent via Faster Payment is because only one can be sent per day.

This "per day" line is grossly misleading. It should read "in any 24 hour period". If you send a FP on Monday at 4pm you must wait until after 4pm on Tuesday before sending another FP.:mad:

cottager

The Payment Services Directive (PSD) standardises payments across Europe (the EEA), and is implemented in the UK by the Payment Services Regulations (PSRs) of 2009.

On 1 Jan 2012 the part comes into force in the UK which makes it a requirement for electronic payments to be processed and reach destination accounts by the end of the next business day (D+1 as it's called); but we were/are assured that: "All UK payment schemes are already compliant with this requirement following the launch of the Faster Payments Service in May 2008."

Being a same-day service, in fact the UK's Faster Payments scheme is better than the D+1 requirement of the PSD.

Or it would be, if our banks had all come up to speed with Faster Payments in the 3+ years since they were introduced. But as we know, several (including A&L/Santander) have not. Many posts on MSE and elsewhere indicate they still seem to be trotting out a variety of different reasons why not, including why they haven't come up to the full £10k daily limit yet (when some like RBS/Natwest and Barclays offered it from the start or very early on), and why there seems to be little rhyme or reason to whether a payment goes out FP or by the longer BACS route.

Though growing more impatient as time has gone by since the introduction of Faster Payments in May 2008, I've always been reasonably tolerant of those banks with teething problems or which hadn't caught up with the front runners in offering the full service. Apart from being a very costly exercise, I understand their systems were largely different from each other, and also (so I believe) archaic in many cases -- decent enough reasons why each one was allowed to roll out FPs at their own pace: for testing, compatibility, sorting out security issues and so on.

Observing the state of play currently however, I can't help wondering how on earth those still seriously lagging behind will meet the obligations even of D+1 in just 6 months' time, if they're still offering such a flaky and variable Faster Payments service now! Presumably they will because they'll have to, but to an outsider looking in, some still seem to be a long way off it at the moment.

But even if we still don't have everyone offering the same-day FP service come the new year, we will at least know that funds should be transferred more quickly with D+1 than they are now. For instance, at last there'll be a better situation than there is currently with agency banks (e.g. building societies) where we can often transfer funds TO our accounts there straight away, since many can accept FPs, but getting money OUT of them again takes 3 or sometimes 4 working days as they cannot send FPs outwards. One working day, with less "lag" while money's in limbo between accounts in different places, will be a big improvement.

I read on the Halifax website that they're anticipating complying with D+1 earlier than the new year. Coming from one of the institutions with a chequered history with the implementation of Faster Payments, that is encouraging! They say: "The majority of payments you send from the 7th November 2011 will arrive by the next working day, whereas previously, payments often took up to 4 days."

So maybe there's more going on behind the scenes than it seems with A&L/Santander and the others still apparently dragging their feet. Let's hope so.

NB: cheques and other paper-based transactions are not affected by the PSRs.

jamesd

There are easy choices like NatWest/RBS and First Direct/HSBC that have £10,000 a day limits that are likely to be sufficient more often. And £100,000 or more for regular payments. Best to just pick a better bank.

ixia

I am frustrated with this with A&L's faster payment it taked days to move between accounts. I now use my RBS account for this usually works instantly.

Mrs_Ryan

heloid wrote: »

Does anyone's SOs go by FP? I set one up via A&L internet banking and it still takes 3 days. I wonder if it works only though the Santander (Abbey) internet banking?

Yep. OH has a few S/O's - to British Gas, Scottish Power, the local council (HSBC account) and Barclays Partner Finance and the ones to the council and Barclays go FP but the others dont. (It says Standing Order via Faster Payment) I think it depends whether the recieving party's account accepts Faster Payments.

GraceCourt

Sceptic001 wrote: »

This significant admission renders the A&L/Santander FP system useless when a payment date is time-critical.

May I clarify that? The Santander FP system is useless, full stop. It's inconsistent, unreliable, and hopelessly limited, both in terms of the maximum amount and the "only one FP per day per customer" rule, which was part of their official answer to one of my current complaints against them.

Worse - one payment that I set up (to go by BACS... sigh!) didn't go on the due date, and just remained on the transfer queue "due" to go on a past date... in the end, I just cancelled it and drove to the payee's premises and paid by cheque. And even worse... one payment that I set up (luckily, I took a screen shot of the setup because of these problems!) had the payment due date changed by someone at Santander after it had been successfully set up, with no notification to me nor permission from me whatsoever.

Both of these complaints are now formal complaints being investigated by the Financial Ombudsman Service because Santander couldn't care less... I just got boiler-plate responses by "secure message" for the eight weeks that had to elapse until they could be referred to the FOS.