Post office online saver - massive warning!

blueberrypie

chequeout wrote: »

I am so sorry if I offended anyone. I was only trying to warn other people who don't know the finer details of direct debits / faster payments, etc.

Even if you had gone on-line this morning and transferred this money from your Santander account, it would not have appeared in your Post Office savings account today. £5k is *way* over Santander's FP limit.

rb10

chequeout wrote: »

I feel really bad now and I am sorry. How do you delete posts? If someone tells me I will delete this post.

Don't. I think some of the other posters in this thread should be deleting their posts instead.

The majority of the population don't know the ins and outs of timescales regarding BACS/FP/DD payments, so I think it's fair enough to post a warning.

I think that the warning should be:

Never use direct debit to pay <£15k into a savings account if it can be avoided. A transfer from your current account will nearly always be at least as quick. (For larger amounts, DD can sometimes be better - it depends on the bank that the money is coming from, as some have quite strict rules on outgoing transfers from an account. But if it's over about £100k, then CHAPS is better still - so you see what I mean, it's a complicated business, which is why I think you are right to warn people.)

In fact, I think you've been lucky with the PO. Some banks that use DD will extend the time that it takes the first one to get there (up to 10 working days, I believe), as it takes them extra time to get it set up on their system.

Mikeyorks

rb10 wrote: »

Don't. I think some of the other posters in this thread should be deleting their posts instead.

Amen to that. You would think - after all these years - people would have a better idea of how DDs work.

They do go via BACS, but the debit / credit are synchronised to the 3rd day. Which is why they don't and won't go via Faster Payment. As there's no float involved .. ie neither the sending or receiving Banks make any interest out of the money in transit.

In the OPs case it's likely PO simply take an extra overnight run to pluck the credit out of their general account and apply it to the individual account. As their accounting is a tad rudimentary.

Olipro

jambosans wrote: »

Incorrect. This is a common misconception with Direct Debits, they take three working days from start to finish

mmm, I should have been more specific; if you're a *business* then it works that way, yes.

If you're not then the direct debit will first go into the bank account of whoever you're saving with - from there it will typically then get sent onward to your account and hence, held for another 3 working days.

If the institution that you save with has their own sort code (i.e. they bank with the BoE rather than another bank) then you have better odds of not having to wait another stint.

xyz123

rb10 wrote: »

Don't. I think some of the other posters in this thread should be deleting their posts instead.

problem is not that OP is posting something he/she should know but it is that the subject and the warnings given are completely out of context with actual problem caused by OP's not up-to-date financial knowledge.

dont get me wrong, i myself have many times asked basic questions where my knowledge was not enough and i dont want OP to delete his/her posts but its all about how its represented as problems caused by bank's incompetance!

Mikeyorks

Olipro wrote: »

If you're not then the direct debit will first go into the bank account of whoever you're saving with - from there it will typically then get sent onward to your account and hence, held for another 3 working days.

Simply not the case. The timeline and synchronisation of debit / credit is clearly explained in the link at post #11. DDs are controlled via BACS - they're not at the whim of individual Banks.

rb10

xyz123 wrote: »

problem is not that OP is posting something he/she should know but it is that the subject and the warnings given are completely out of context with actual problem caused by OP's not up-to-date financial knowledge.

dont get me wrong, i myself have many times asked basic questions where my knowledge was not enough and i dont want OP to delete his/her posts but its all about how its represented as problems caused by bank's incompetance!

If people feel that that is the case, then a polite "It's not actually the fault of the Post Office, it's just the way that Direct Debits work, because xyz. But you could instead do abc in the future, which would be quicker and avoid this problem" would be much nicer to receive than some of the above posts.

Olipro

Mikeyorks wrote: »

Simply not the case. The timeline and synchronisation of debit / credit is clearly explained in the link at post #11. DDs are controlled via BACS - they're not at the whim of individual Banks.

let me explain again: Bacs will debit the money from the account and then credit it to the account of the savings institution, in this case, the post office.

the post office use a commercial bank instead of running their own account at the BoE hence once Bacs settle the money into their account, the money then has to be remitted onto the Post office customer's account.

The extra 3 day delay is caused by Bank of Ireland treating the internal transfer as a Bacs (in reality, it's never submitted to Bacs, and this is how they make themselves a bit of money in the process)