Advice About Switching Banks, please

basketcase

Hi!

On Saturday I had an altercation with the Abbey about the fact that they charged me for not paying a Standing Order because there was glitch in my salary payment (it was paid by CHAPS not BACS and hadn't hit my account by 0700h, which is the time they chose to make all my deductions :mad: ). This is the latest episode in an ongoing saga and I've finally had enough and have decided to change banks.

My major concern is that I'm weekly paid, so most of my SOs are weekly too. I rang the Alliance and Leicester this morning and they say that it can take 4-5 weeks to get all the DDs etc sorted.

What do I do in the meantime? Could I get my salary paid into my new account, set up SOs and then ensure there's enough money to cover DDs till it's all sorted out or what? My (somewhat dim!) lightbulb doesn't want to go overdrawn on my overdraft!:o

All help gratefully received.

rio

If you have an overdraft facility with your existing bank, then you need to ensure that your prospective new bankers are happy to grant one and get that arranged when you go to open your account, or as soon after as possible. Once you have given notice to transfer the account you will be asked to return all your cards and cheque books to the Abbey National. Normally standing orders and direct debits are stopped once you have given notice to transfer, so you should open your new account, get it up and running and then contact the relevant organisations and ask them to quote your new account details before you request the Abbey account to be transferred. This is to prevent your account going overdrawn and the new bankers refusing to issue funds to cover a possible debt. When I worked for a bank on account transfers we had to be 200% certain that everything had been accounted for before we transferred a credit balance. At this point you should consider your old account to be totally inactive as far as you are concerned. It may take some time to close though, as every item you have issued has to be accounted for, so if for example you wrote a cheque three months ago and it is still to come through, the Abbey could quite legitimately refuse to transfer your account until that cheque has either been presented or become out of date. This is especially frustrating if you haven't written details on your cheque stubs as the bank can wait six months from the date the cheque book came into their possesion until the transfer is complete, so make sure your stubs are as complete as you can. When the account is transferred all you will really get is a closing statement. All the important paperwork goes between the banks, but to avoid errors make sure that you oversee everything yourself.

M_Thomson

basketcase wrote:

Hi!

On Saturday I had an altercation with the Abbey about the fact that they charged me for not paying a Standing Order because there was glitch in my salary payment (it was paid by CHAPS not BACS and hadn't hit my account by 0700h, which is the time they chose to make all my deductions :mad: ). This is the latest episode in an ongoing saga and I've finally had enough and have decided to change banks.

My major concern is that I'm weekly paid, so most of my SOs are weekly too. I rang the Alliance and Leicester this morning and they say that it can take 4-5 weeks to get all the DDs etc sorted.

What do I do in the meantime? Could I get my salary paid into my new account, set up SOs and then ensure there's enough money to cover DDs till it's all sorted out or what? My (somewhat dim!) lightbulb doesn't want to go overdrawn on my overdraft!:o

All help gratefully received.

As far as I am aware, Chaps does not operate on Saturdays.

regularsaver1

I'd complain to your emlployer at them paying you chaps instead of Bacs

humfer

basketcase wrote:

Hi!

On Saturday I had an altercation with the Abbey about the fact that they charged me for not paying a Standing Order because there was glitch in my salary payment (it was paid by CHAPS not BACS and hadn't hit my account by 0700h, which is the time they chose to make all my deductions :mad: ). This is the latest episode in an ongoing saga and I've finally had enough and have decided to change banks.

My major concern is that I'm weekly paid, so most of my SOs are weekly too. I rang the Alliance and Leicester this morning and they say that it can take 4-5 weeks to get all the DDs etc sorted.

What do I do in the meantime? Could I get my salary paid into my new account, set up SOs and then ensure there's enough money to cover DDs till it's all sorted out or what? My (somewhat dim!) lightbulb doesn't want to go overdrawn on my overdraft!:o

All help gratefully received.

Surprised A&L quoted that long to change SO/DD's. Recently changed to Lloyds TSB and they took about 2 weeks - probably a little too quick in the end. Remember if you do switch to leave your current account open until everything is switched over just in case the odd DD fails

Evie_P

I just contacted the people I have the DD's with directly as it was much quicker in the end!

A & L have tried that with me several times as my standing order wasn't taken til the following days and various 'quirks' of their calculations have left me very dissatisfied also.

Good luck with getting it resolved. I claimed some bank charges back from my work because they keep paying my reimbursable expenses late....

jonathan_67

Just switched from A&L to Nationwide. I was supprised how smoothly it went. The account was set up in a week and the DD's and SO's started to be changed by week two. The only glitch happened when one of the companies draged their feet updating their payment systems. Next time I switch I will change all my DD's myself just like Evie P suggested

Jon

basketcase

M_Thomson wrote:

As far as I am aware, Chaps does not operate on Saturdays.

Sorry, wasn't very clear there. It was Saturday that I got a letter, dated over a week earlier, telling me about charges.

What happened was that my employer's brand new payroll system crashed completely and they missed the BACS deadline. So that we'd still get paid on the Friday, they arranged for a once-off payment by CHAPS. My salary was, indeed, paid on the Friday, but Abbey said that:
a) RBS had missed their (Abbey's) 1400h on Thursday deadline and therefore the clearance of the CHAPS payment could have been anytime up to c.o.b. on the Friday - even if it hit Abbey at, say, 1445h on Thursday. Implication in the tone used was that I was lucky it was in by 11!! (Though, as I said, this could have been intonation due to accent).
b) Although I wasn't overdrawn, because the money was cleared before c.o.b., they were unable to pay a SO because of insufficient funds, so they were charging me £35 for it not being paid.
c) All my SOs DDs etc (ie all negative transactions on my account) took place at 0700h on Friday - that is before the bank opened . So there was NO WAY anyone who wasn't up between 0001 and 0659, on-line and with enough savings to cover a full week's deductions could possibly avoid being charged. Hence my comment about "the unhelpful side of ethical".

basketcase

Thanks for the help.

My worry is that, being weekly paid so that many of my SOs are also weekly, there isn't a real clear period where a complete transfer could take place without the risk of my going overdrawn.

I was wondering if it might be possible to change by degrees. For instance, open an account and set up all the SOs then get my salary paid in weekly till there was enough to cover the DDs, then close the account.

Seems not. Oh well...

humfer

jonathan_67 wrote:

Just switched from A&L to Nationwide. I was supprised how smoothly it went. The account was set up in a week and the DD's and SO's started to be changed by week two. The only glitch happened when one of the companies draged their feet updating their payment systems. Next time I switch I will change all my DD's myself just like Evie P suggested

Jon

I was surprised how quickly my FD to Lloyds transfer took also. Infact when I spoke to the Lloyds transfer team they said that they had just started using a new system which makes everything faster. Not sure if this was just Lloyds or a industry wide thing...

PBA

It's due to the new industry wide system. Your old bank has to provide your direct debit details within a week of being asked, and any direct debit that wasn't set up in writing can be switched immediately. Any DDs that were set up by signing a mandate take a bit longer, as a copy of the signed switcher mandate needs to be sent to these companies by your new bank.