Warning for First Direct Customers!!

richardmk

First Direct always print how good they are, but in reality they are terrible. They say they work from a warehouse in Leeds and from saving costs can give customers a better deal. They pay 50% of the credit interest paid by LloydsTSB, and now they intend to penalise anyone who does not credit £1500 in a month.
My recommendation to anyone would be to close First Direct, certainly not join them.

Jakethepeg_4

My advice to anyone who is stuck with FD because of an overdraft etc is to cancel your direct debits and pay them by cheque. Also if you tend to pay at the supermarket by switch, start paying by cheque. Make them do something for the £10 charge

Phoenix79_2

richardmk wrote:

First Direct always print how good they are, but in reality they are terrible. They say they work from a warehouse in Leeds and from saving costs can give customers a better deal. They pay 50% of the credit interest paid by LloydsTSB, and now they intend to penalise anyone who does not credit £1500 in a month.
My recommendation to anyone would be to close First Direct, certainly not join them.

FD always print how good they are? How about all the awards and plaudits they have won from independent parties? They must be the most decorated bank in the last 15 years or so.

You may be correct in saying that LloydsTSB pay more interest....but then again LloydsTSB have outsourced work to the subcontinent which in my book is worse than charging people for an account.

My recommendation is that if you are happy with FD then stay with them and don't listen to anyone else

jonesMUFCforever

You think that all call centres for HSBC are in UK?

I think what has kicked this off is the fact that credit card charges have been capped at £12 and the same could well be introduced shortly for current accounts.
Only the stupid pay but expect to get away with it and now banks are finding any way possible to claw back those funds.
Yes I work for a bank but would never pay to run an account. I choose to do so because I'm ahead of the game by not having to pay for mobile phone insurance, road breakdown cover and holiday insurance. This is less per year than buying them all seperately.If they were not I would downgrade my account.

nearlyrich

richardmk wrote:

First Direct always print how good they are, but in reality they are terrible.

Why what have they done to you?

They say they work from a warehouse in Leeds and from saving costs can give customers a better deal.

They work from a call centre in Leeds with a second one in Hamilton in Scotland

They pay 50% of the credit interest paid by LloydsTSB, and now they intend to penalise anyone who does not credit £1500 in a month.

I don't keep my savings in my current account any spare cash leaves on payday to a high interest account, and as I said above it's really easy to avoid the charge.

My recommendation to anyone would be to close First Direct, certainly not join them.[/quote]

Why would I close a perfectly good bank account ?

Phoenix79_2

ejones999 wrote:

You think that all call centres for HSBC are in UK?

I think what has kicked this off is the fact that credit card charges have been capped at £12 and the same could well be introduced shortly for current accounts.
Only the stupid pay but expect to get away with it and now banks are finding any way possible to claw back those funds.
Yes I work for a bank but would never pay to run an account. I choose to do so because I'm ahead of the game by not having to pay for mobile phone insurance, road breakdown cover and holiday insurance. This is less per year than buying them all seperately.If they were not I would downgrade my account.

I know exactly where HSBC call centres are (i've suffered from their ineptness before!). I don't agree with HSBC sending jobs overseas either.....but we're talking about FD here which is run as a seperate entity.

If forced into a corner i would rather pay a fee and bank with company that had UK CS rather than for free with a bank that had shipped jobs abroad. As it happens i have free accounts with UK based CS which is the best of both worlds. I do also have a account which i pay for but that is by choice (for the benefits)

jonesMUFCforever

Run as a seperate entity - no cross sales?
Are they quoted seperately or is just part of HSBC who tell FD what to do just as Prudential tell Egg what to do (increased life cover ads etc over last few months - guess with who?).

realaledrinker

Jakethepeg wrote:

My advice to anyone who is stuck with FD because of an overdraft etc is to cancel your direct debits and pay them by cheque. Also if you tend to pay at the supermarket by switch, start paying by cheque. Make them do something for the £10 charge

Pointless exercise. The supermarket would bear the cost of the cheque processing, not the bank.

Phoenix79_2

ejones999 wrote:

Run as a seperate entity - no cross sales?
Are they quoted seperately or is just part of HSBC who tell FD what to do just as Prudential tell Egg what to do (increased life cover ads etc over last few months - guess with who?).

No cross sales. Both HSBC Bank and FD offer accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgages, savings, share dealing etc. Almost like two completely seperate companies. Only thing they have in common is they both report into HSBC Holdings Plc. As for whose decision it was to charge fees.....i have no idea!

Rafter

There has to be some balance in this debate. Sure the banks have had it too easy and I'm sure there are a few worried directors looking at the level of unlawful fees being recovered and nervous about their juicy payment protection insurance income going down the pan.

But someone has to pay for the 100,000+ staff employed by the UK banks to keep their operations running, someone has to pay for all those cash machines to be filled, branches to be opened, cards, cheque books statements, computer systems etc etc etc.

If these services aren't subsidised by excessive fees, overpriced insurance or charges to retailers then how are the banks going to cover their basic operating costs?

1. Insist on maintaining a balance of £1000 in a current account at 0% interest so the bank can make £60 interest a year to cover costs?

2. Make a charge of £5+ per month?

3. Charge for more expensive services like cheques, making payments over the counter, premium phone numbers for general enquiries? A charge of £1 for each statement (anyone with a mobile phone seems quite happy accepting this for an itemised bill!)

4. Charge customers who go overdrawn a much higher rate of interest and not lend as willingly to reduce the level of bad debt costs.

Personally I would do the following:

a. No interest on the first £500 in the account, 5% plus thereafter

b. Flat £10 fee for going over limit or for reprocessing direct debits etc which have failed.

c. Charge of 50p per statement (free online) to reduce environmental cost and waste producing millions of statements each month.

d. Charge of 50p for making payments by cheque when you could use online banking or a debit card instead.

e. Overdraft rate of less than 10%

f. A buffer overdraft of £250 for all customers before fees and charges are incurred.

So, it is free banking, if you choose to operate your account in an efficient way, but everyone pays a bit by not earning interest on small balances which covers the basic costs of operating the account.

Nobody is subsidising other banking customers excessively. Nobody is being ripped off by unlawful fees. No more queues in a supermarket with people using cheques.

Oh, and I think retailers ought to offer a blanket 1% discount for using debit cards to reflect the lower costs to them of lower security costs etc!

Sounds fair to me!

R.