Halifax Reward or First Direct - From Nationwide Flex

apt

I agree with onlypaddy. Do both. Halifax for the cashback and rewards, First Direct for running your day to day banking. FD has more reliable faster payments, much better telephone banking and a £250 interest free overdraft. It also gives you 5% on a one year regular saver for up to £300 per month.

Wyndham

Another person fed up with Nationwide and moving away. In our case it was to do with ISAs where mistakes were made, then the 'apology' handled badly....

Moving to First Direct and happy to be doing so! Nationwide USED to be different, but not anymore.....

adindas

This is absolutely fine. That is what I have done.
Just be carefull with the pitfall make sure that you allow say few days in the Halifax a/c to make sure that you are not running over draft when you transfer it back to where their origin.

ADINDAS

rachieb123 wrote: »

Hi,

Is it possible to open the halifax account, then just transfer 1000 in a month from my main account and then transfer it back out again, do you still get the £5 a month if you do this?

rb10

adindas wrote: »

This is absolutely perfect. That is what I have done.
Just be carefull with loophole and make sure you allow say few days in the Halifax a/c to make sure that you are not tagged as over draft when you transfer it back to where their origin.

ADINDAS

No need for that. As long as the money has arrived in the account then it can be transferred out instantly.

huw01

I too have a reward account (bank of scotland branding but the same thing - free fivers) and I also have a reward clarity credit card which also pays a fiver for monthly spends over £300.

I only use the reward account for the free fivers by quickly doing an in/out transfer of a grand to qualify for the fiver. Then as the reward clarity credit card gives a further free fiver after £00 monthly spend I'm in effect getting £120 per year from HBOS for doing actually very little work !

adindas

Dear rb10

Sorry I probably forget to explain what I mean with transfer is when we set up SO. If we just transfer it manually by ourselves of course we could see whether the amount £1000 have been booked/entered into the destination current a/c and as soon as the £1,000 is booked, we could tranfer it back instantly to the origin a/c using Internet banking by ourselve. But the chance is that with £1,000 SO it is highly unlikely recognised as FP and therefore it will still take 3 working days.

But with SO, to what I have seen from HSBC to Halifax it takes 3 working days to arrive to Halifax taking into consideration weekends, holidays. The danger when I set up SO on the day I transfer from HSBC-HAlifax, High risk, it will be transfered to HSBC (by SO) before the money come into my Halifax a/c and I will be running overdraft aprox £1.000 in my halifax a/c and pay huge fine,

I am transfering £1000 to my Halifax a/c just to get reward of £5.00 and then tranfer it back (SO) to HSBC. So I just keep About £1 balance in my Halifax a/c. Here I am still want to use HSBC as my main a/c.

Is there any way to shorten this process that I am not aware of, I mean without the danger of running overdraft ??. I am aware I am loosing interest here of £1,000 for a few days..

ADINDAS

rb10 wrote: »

No need for that. As long as the money has arrived in the account then it can be transferred out instantly.

rb10

HSBC don't yet do faster payments for standing orders, which is why they are sent by BACS and take three working days.

If you manually logged on to HSBC each month, transferred the £1k to Halifax, and then logged on to Halifax to transfer it back, then both transfers should go by FP, and the whole process would only take a couple of minutes.

Alternatively (probably simpler), just pay your salary directly into Halifax and then you don't have to worry about remembering to do this at all. What do HSBC give you that Halifax don't?

gt94sss2

rb10 wrote: »

HSBC don't yet do faster payments for standing orders, which is why they are sent by BACS and take three working days.

HSBC were due to start sending standing order by faster Payments this month - and according to this they have now started to do so. The limit is currently very low (£20) but if its anything like when they when they originally launched Faster Payments, I expect this to be ramped up very quickly.

EDIT: The HSBC website states (for standing orders):HSBC Faster Payment limit is £20 from 24th September 2010; this will be increased to £50 from 05th October 2010 - and as it always has been is instant if transferring to a HSBC/FD sort code.

If you manually logged on to HSBC each month, transferred the £1k to Halifax, and then logged on to Halifax to transfer it back, then both transfers should go by FP, and the whole process would only take a couple of minutes.

Agreed, its very simple and instant just to transfer the £1000 by 'normal faster payments' between HSBC and Halifax and back again.

Once HSBC increase their SO limit - then one could use that but remember even under FS, standing orders are only processed on weekdays.. unlike other faster payments

Regards
Sunil

adindas

The problem with doing it manually yourselves is that you might forget it, or you are going overseas where you do not want to touch your online banking.

But I understand now why my SO take a few days to arrive and come back again.

ADINDAS

gt94sss2 wrote: »

Agreed, its very simple and instant just to transfer the £1000 by 'normal faster payments' between HSBC and Halifax and back again.

Regards
Sunil

rb10

gt94sss2 wrote: »

HSBC were due to start sending standing order by faster Payments this month - and according to this they have now started to do so. The limit is currently very low (£20) but if its anything like when they when they originally launched Faster Payments, I expect this to be ramped up very quickly.

EDIT: The HSBC website states (for standing orders):HSBC Faster Payment limit is £20 from 24th September 2010; this will be increased to £50 from 05th October 2010 - and as it always has been is instant if transferring to a HSBC/FD sort code.

They didn't send a £10 SO from HSBC to Halifax on Friday by FP, so I guess their implementation date has been pushed back from what the website claims. I expect they'll get there in the end though.