Post Office / Bank of Ireland current account

Porcupine

I'm on the lookout for a savings/current account combo, that fulfills a few properties:

• Decent savings rate
• No charges/loss of interest etc for savings
• Current account with no minimum monthly payment, minimum number of transactions etc
• Fast/instant transfers between current and savings accounts
• All the usual simple current account services
• Ideally a local branch for paying in cheques
• Not at a banking group where I already have accounts (this narrows the field quite a lot)

I like the look of the Post Office's Online Saver account. But they don't seem to have a current account. Various reports in early 2009 suggest they were going to offer one, but they seem to have dropped this idea.

But PO accounts are operated by Bank of Ireland, who have a current account. So can anyone give any feedback on BoI's current account? I'm relaxed about the FSCS protection issue. Are there instant payments between BoI accounts and PO accounts? Are BoI still not able to send Faster Payments (I found a Which? article saying they weren't in September)? I'm not going to be storing huge quantities of cash in the BoI account, just do a few DDs and card transactions.

Any other comments on Bank of Ireland?

Cheers!

bmwboi99

bank or ireland are cool:)

Porcupine

Would you care to show your working?