First Direct £10 monthly banking fee (merged)

MPH80

There are plenty of free current accounts and this situation will remain while there is competition.

If this is the case - how have we ended up with uncapped BT fees on credit cards? Surely competition would have kept those fees down to 0?

ashcarrot

It is worrying as other banks might decide to take it on. I'm suprised at First Direct as they wouldn't have the overheads of the high street banks.

seven-day-weekend

seven-day-weekend wrote:

We now have NOTHING paid into ours, and it has a balance of £46! Haven't had the letter yet though.....

We'll be closing the account then.

I've now closed it and had the £46 transferred to my husband's account at West Bromwich Building Society.

tomstickland

MPH80 wrote:

If this is the case - how have we ended up with uncapped BT fees on credit cards? Surely competition would have kept those fees down to 0?

Because the end result is a blend of a number of input factors.
Seeing how little nous the average consumer has then I'd have to agree that competition only has some effect on the market.

Competition will at least slow the move over to fee based banking. Then when fee based becomes the norm then some bank will start a campaign about its revolutionary "no fees" account in an attempt to win new customers.

I think market-share wars are what most of the personal finance industry is about.

After all, if everyone always went to the cheapest car insurance provider then the whole insurance industry would cease to work.

jellycat40

There has been a lot on the news today about credit cards charging fees so I will not be surprised if the banks (all of them) do the same.

The chap they interviewed from Price Waterhouse who have done the research about the charges have said that it is a direct response to people claiming back unfair charges and that the charges are now capped at £12. Also the amount of unpaid accounts due to personal insolvency and other non payment.

It means that the credit card companies are only making a few million a day instead of a few billion and that we have to help them recitfy this by paying for the priviledge of having their card/account.

A point to realise MPH80 is that no one with a FD account has a perfectly standard current account, they all come with a pre approved overdraft facility of up to £500.

I would say that the only accounts that may not be touched by the banks is the very basic accounts offering no overdraft or cheque book only a cash card. Even these may not be exempt in the end.

I was very happy with first direct when I was with them and they always gave me very good service, if I still was able to bank with them I would gladly pay the charge but £10 is a bit steep.

Louise

seven-day-weekend

Voyager2002 wrote:

In practice, you just need to transfer some money from FD to another bank, and then back into FD.

Don't understand quite what you mean. I'm not just saying that we don't have £1500 a month going into FD, I'm saying that we don't have £1500 coming into anywhere! We have less than £1500 a month to live on.

Anyway, as I said above, I've closed the account now.

jellycat40

that confused me too seven day weekend. I thought you had made it clear in your post.

Louise

MPH80

I'll answer two at once here:

tomstickland wrote:

Because the end result is a blend of a number of input factors.
Seeing how little nous the average consumer has then I'd have to agree that competition only has some effect on the market.

Absolutely. You have to realise the point I was making, somewhat simiplified I'll admit, was that to simply say "competition will stop these fees" is naive.

You're right that a lot of banks will introduce these fees, we'll end up in the situation we are in now with BT fees (very few left with no fee, some capped, most uncapped) and then the situation may partially reverse itself, but the process will take years, and there will be a long period in the 'very few' situation before it starts to correct.

jellycat40 wrote:

A point to realise MPH80 is that no one with a FD account has a perfectly standard current account, they all come with a pre approved overdraft facility of up to £500.

At an entirely unimpressive 10.9% AER. You could go to A&L for 0% for a year (5.9% after) or Nationwide at 7.75%.

Also - this 'pre approved' stuff look 'Subject To Status' to me - not quite so automatic:

http://www.firstdirect.com/bankaccount/bank_account.shtml

M.

sinar

jellycat40 wrote:

A point to realise MPH80 is that no one with a FD account has a perfectly standard current account, they all come with a pre approved overdraft facility of up to £500.
Louise

My overdraft limit has only ever been £250

Julie

pfpf

seven-day-weekend wrote:

Don't understand quite what you mean. I'm not just saying that we don't have £1500 a month going into FD, I'm saying that we don't have £1500 coming into anywhere! We have less than £1500 a month to live on.

Anyway, as I said above, I've closed the account now.

i think the idea is:

you have to fund with £1500.00, but your total income eg. is £1000.00. so you are short by £500.00. so send this £500.00 to another account(from your £1000.00 balance) or even withdraw it in cash. then deposit it back to FD and technically you have funded your account with £1500.00.

doesnt have any relevance to you now, as you have closed the account. i hope it may help others