A brave new world of banking

seven-day-weekend

Closed mine yesterday.

dexters_mum_2

I don't like this idea of a charge being made. Personally if I were a FD customer, I'd open one of their savings accounts and put £1 in it, but I realise not everyone will wish to do this and will end up switching banks, but I wonder how many banks will now follow suit, we've seen that credit card annual fees may be back, is it inevitable the banks will start charging too?

alwaysskint96

katskorner wrote:

I have been with first direct for many many years - pretty much when they first appeared and I have two current accounts and a rubbish paying savings account that I use for day to day bits and pieces.

I do not pay £1500 into these accounts each month anymore as I am now a stay-at-home mom.

I object most strongly to these charges and now I may be forced to close my accounts and lose my banking history because of this. I think it is incredibly cheeky of the bank to do this. I am most unhappy that I am likely to be forced to move.

You wouldn'y have to pay- you have a savings account

Spark

This is a case where people should stick together and send a clear message to other banks that starting charging for having a bank account is not acceptable. Banks are earning enough by investing our money here and there, that's why it takes 3 to 4 days to move money from one account to another,with the technology of today it can be done in a couple of hours. So we are paying them by allowing them to make huge profits by using the money in our accounts.
Even if FD says that by taking another of their products you will avoid paying the £10 a month, it is not said that if other banks start charging, they will give you any options at all, once they see it worked with FD customers. They will probably try to see how far they can go with the charges.
Surely, if they want to get rid of dormant accounts, they could warn the accounts holders that if the account is not active after a certain amount of time,the account will be closed and the money in it will be sent to the holder by cheque or transfered in another chosen account. Or any similar solution.
Penalising people because they are not earning enough to their liking is disgusting as a lot of people earn less than 24K a year. Furthermore, the fact that FD wants to get rid of dormant accounts doesn't make sense as the low earners would be the ones who would own only the one account and will be using that account for everything.

neeelix

hi all,i'm along-time FD customer who's been very happy with the service recieved, i've got a couple of products so as i read it i won't pay the £10.00 charge - read this - it from FD

http://www.firstdirect.com/faqs/index.shtml:

Spark

OOOPS Page not found???

mountainofdebt

Say you had a salary of £1000 that was going in each month so theoretically you were liable for the £10 fee.

What is to stop you withdrawing £500 and then putting that same £500 into your account?

Thus, you would be crediting your account with the required £1500 preventing you from being charged the fee.

tomstickland

Nothing; you can do that.

I've just closed my FD account.
Fair enough really; I don't use the account since they have no products that can beat what other banks have and I don't use the telephone service. I've found regular internet banking suits me fine.

ManAtHome

Brave NEW world? more like a return to "the good old days"...

This is obviously a bit of a ranging shot to guage the level of inertia (HSBC can probably manage to subsidise any reduction in profits). I suspect there will be more positive action from MSE-ers than the general public, whether that's enough, we'll have to wait and see.

I wouldn't "bank" on too much action from the govt - wouldn't be that difficult for the banks to relocate their tax bases if anyone starts getting a bit uppity...

Cypher

mountainofdebt wrote:

What is to stop you withdrawing £500 and then putting that same £500 into your account?

You would have to move it away from FD and then back, as most of these minimum level accounts specify the funding in to the account can't be by internal transfers etc.

This is one of the things that has messed me up as my wage goes into my main current account where I split my wage and transfer a £400 and £800 amount out to two further accounts.