A&L Warning!

chrisaw

Just a word of warning so that you don't find yourself in my situation. If you're tempted to open a current account with a linked savings account with A&L, make sure that you apply for the right account. I couldn't believe it when I saw their Premier Direct Current Account at 6.1% was apparently linked to a savings account which paid 12% on maturity after 12 months, and leapt at it. The big idea was to transfer all my debts onto my new Virgin credit card for the 0% interest rate for 12 months, and over the next year pay as much as possible into the A&L savings to give a lump sum to pay of a major portion of the CC on maturity.

The A&L accounts were opened and I thought everything was going to plan, until I found out that instead of a Premier Direct Current Account, I should have opened up a Premier Current Account (which pays just 1.5%) in order to get a Premier Regular Saver Account (12%) rather than the Plus Saver (4.3%) that I ended up with. After a lot of ringing around, I've managed to get them to switch the accounts to the correct ones "as a goodwill gesture", but it means that the first payment isn't going into the Saver account until the beginning of December (over two months into my interest free period with Virgin).

I've been told by at least two people at A&L that I'm far from being the only one in this situation, and that perhaps the website wasn't as clear as it could have been, especially given that the account names are so similar. So I'm just posting this as a word of caution, both to anyone thinking of opening an account with them, or to anyone who has done recently, to double check what it is they're actually getting.

johnmoney05

It is a little confusing, but if you read their website carefully, it did clearly say so...

Bisoy

Chrisaw hi there,

I can understand that you we're very upset and it's nice of you to warn other readers about A&L but I have to agree with the previous poster that if you have just read carefully on their website and with other website such as https://www.moneysupermarket.com it has been clearly stated the difference between the two. So I won't hold A&L responsible for such mistake.;)

chrisaw

I used to work for BT Openworld, and lost count of the number of times I spoke to people who were confused about whether they had a BT Anytime account or a BT Openworld Anytime account. All because the account names were so similar. Yes, the information was all there on the website, but if you don't know there's something to be wary of, then it's easy to find yourself clicking the wrong link and applying for the wrong thing. As I said, I've been told by two A&L employees that they've had a lot of cases like this. There may be people reading the boards who are unknowingly in the same situation.

userdefinable

thanks for pointing this out, I didnt know that they had sucessfully misled me with their similar naming of the accounts. I really think the way the website is done is intended to mislead!

mleonard79

I think some of the confusion may stem from the fact that up until the start of September the linked regular saver account did come with the Premier Direct Account but when they upped the interest levels from 5% to 6.1% for the current account and from 10% to 12% for the saver they swapped the saver over to the Premier account which had obviously not been getting as many takers beforehand.

It's a shame as I felt the Premier Direct account was much better when it had the saver attached to it and I think it might have been better just to leave them at the lower rates but keep them linked together.

Anyway I also agree with the above posters that it is quite clear on the website which account is linked to the saver but perhaps some people are going to the site with the old rules in mind that they've seen previously and not checking before they apply.