Alliance and Leicester and it's stupid payment system

hoyles10

knightstyle wrote: »

Don't even start to try to transfer money from one A&L account to another. it takes 5 working days MINIMUM! Sometimes over a week if there is a bank holiday! How can anyone work with this.

I've found if I transfer money from A&L to any other bank account if it's under £250 it show's straight away, if it's more than £250 it usually takes about 3 days. It's something to do with the faster payments system and the transfer limits, A&L seem to have one of the lowest limits. I have never had any problems transferring from A&L savings to A&L current account or the other way though.

knightstyle

Well we want to transfer money fron an A&L current account to an A&L cashplus account every week. It leaves the current account on Monday and arrives in the cash account on Thursday EXCEPT when there is a Bank holiday, then it usually arrives the following Monday and sometimes not until Thursday!
Why can't banks have a system where we can arrange for money to arrive from one account into another account on the same day EVERY week?
At the moment if there is a bank holiday we have to ring up a few days before, cancel the SO, then ring up on Thursday and do a manual payment and reinstate the SO. PAINFUL!!!!

BandJB

knightstyle wrote: »

Well we want to transfer money fron an A&L current account to an A&L cashplus account every week....
Why can't banks have a system where we can arrange for money to arrive from one account into another account on the same day EVERY week?

My guess is that the Cashplus account is the problem. It's a very basic account designed for 'once a day' batch processing of all transactions, so everything 'automated' goes via BACS, which is a three-day cycle with strict rules regarding what is a 'working' day. In effect, A&L have off-loaded their intra-bank (internal) transfers onto the Clearing Houses system to keep down costs.

You don't say what kind of current account the other one is. If it's one designed for Internet banking then you could try sending £1 to the other account and see if it goes via Faster Payments - but then you'd have to manage the weekly transfers yourself in lumps of £250 or less. Other than that, the best I can suggest is that you upgrade the Cashplus account to an on-line type and/or move the Cashplus to a different bank and use the FP facility that way - but you're still going to need to manage it yourself every week. It's a matter of 'Horses for Courses', I'm afraid.

focae

williham wrote: »

I would close down my accounts but the savings account is 3.15% so it would be cutting off my nose.

What's the point in keeping accounts open for the sake of a marginally higher interest rate than you can get elswhere when you are negating any interest paid by incurring charges?

Instead of ineffectual complaining....vote with your feet and go to a different bank. The banks with a history of poor standards and poor customer service will only change when they lose custom.

williham

I might close it down if I don't get my £5 back, but I'll never incur the fee again if I don't close it down because I now know not to schedule payments for the future.

knightstyle

BandJB, Thanks for the explanation but I feel we are stuck with it. It is an account for my BIL, his wages are paid into a joint account my wife, the other account holder, pays his bills and puts £*** spending money each week into the cashplus account for him. Is there a simple automatic way to do this so that the money arrives each Thursday even on Bank holiday weeks?
Sorry to original poster didn't mean to hijack your post.

MEMBER02

BandJB wrote: »

Total rubbish!

I do transfers several times a month, to and from my current account and Online Saver account. The transfer is instantaneous and I can print off the updated Online Saver statement immediately; the current account 'available' amount changes immediately and the transaction detail shows up on that account's statement by the next day.

As it happens, I made a transfer just this morning, exactly as described.
I've never had any problem with A&L in the 3 years I've been with them. Maybe I've been lucky, and I worry about what may happen with the future changes to Santander, but I can only speak as I find. Blatently false statements such as the one quoted above help no-one to make objective decisions.

I agree it is instantaneous,5 days what a joke lol!!!!

Scarlet_Fever

hoyles10 wrote: »

I've found if I transfer money from A&L to any other bank account if it's under £250 it show's straight away, if it's more than £250 it usually takes about 3 days. It's something to do with the faster payments system and the transfer limits, A&L seem to have one of the lowest limits. I have never had any problems transferring from A&L savings to A&L current account or the other way though.

i transfer around £1k a month from my lloyds to my abbey account, but i do it it 4 lots of £250 to make sure it goes the day i tell it to...