Appalling service from Alliance & Leicester

MarkyMarkD

Definitely looking @ Premier Plus T&Cs
http://www.alliance-leicester.co.uk/premier-plus/index.asp?page=page4#pay

It clearly states that you can deposit cash or cheques at any of their branches.

You are quite right, both in the Premier Plus guide and the Ts & Cs it says that you can deposit cash and cheques at branches. So complain if they suggest that you cannot!

I've never been turned away, personally, and I deposit cheques to my PPCA fairly frequently (but nearly always at the same branch).

welnik

i too have transferred my current account to A&L. I will be contacting the companies myself with regards to direct debits. I remember when i changed over from Lloyds to HSBC it was an absolute nightmare when they did the switching service. Wouldnt use that again.

margaretclare

Hi all

I changed to A&L about a year ago and I've had absolutely no problems whatever.

MarkyMarkD

My main point of dissent was the information that had come to my attention regarding the transfer of funds from my Instant Access and Plus Saver Accounts - it seems that although the accounts are held on the same computer they can debit the source accounts but take their time in crediting my Current Account.

My moan was that if there was a credit and a debit to be applied to the account on the same day they debited first, which caused the account to become overdrawn and they charged me £30 for the privilege, returned the debit, and then entered the credit putting the account back in credit.

I have checked this system with two High Street Banks who thought that I was winding them up - as if I would.

This may seem perverse to you, Samuri, but it boils down to the difference between real time processing and batch processing.

Most big banks use batch processing for their main transaction flows.

This means that they bulk together all the similar transactions and process them at once.

So, one transaction flow would be debiting your acccount A - which involves checking that there are sufficient funds there because otherwise that transaction fails.

A second transaction flow, which CANNOT happen before the first, is crediting your account B - which would only happen if account A contained enough money.

So far so good?

Then of course a third transaction flow is the processing of cheque withdrawals against account A.

I think you are saying that on a particular date (the date a cheque was expected to clear) you transferred money from account A to account B, expecting it to be used to clear the cheque.

This will NOT work. I do not believe it will work at ANY bank. The banks have to batch process the cheques, and at the point they process them (which is first thing in the morning) they have to decide whether they are clearing or bouncing them.

If you transfer funds ON THAT DAY they will not be there when the cheque clearing batch process is run - so the cheque will bounce and you will be charged. The fact that you subsequently bung funds into the account is irrelevant.

The 3 pm cut off time you mentioned (from Mr Astley's reply) is an interesting one - I am not sure why it needs to be 3 pm rather than midnight - but I would always expect a bank to require the funds to be there by midnight at the start of the clearing day for the cheque to be cleared.

Hope that helps.

Incidentally, if your bank allows you to have a large overdraft limit without charge (as A&L do if you have the income to support it) then you can make use of this and transfer the funds from the savings account to the current account on the day the cheque clears. This is because the cheque will clear against the overdraft limit, but because you transfer funds before the end of the cheque clearing day (which might mean 3pm in your case!) you will not be charged interest. Hope that also makes sense!

(E.g. overdraft limit £2,000. Account balance at start of day = £NIL. Cheque for £1,999 clears - notional balance -£1,999 which is within o/d limit and hence ok so cheque clears. Transfer from savings account £2,000 comes in to clear overdraft and set balance back to £1 by end of day = no overdraft interest charged.

Samuri_the_Shafted

MarkyMarkD

Thaks for your comments re my moan about Alliance & Leicester.

My complaint with them revolves around moving funds from my Instant Access Account to my Current Account.

The Transfers are always made the day prior to the debit being entered onto the Current Account.

The time I am required, as per S Astley, is not as per HSBC, Barclays or First Direct.

When transfers are made by these banks, especially between my accounts in HSBC and First Direct the credits if made before midnight are made immediately.

Why does the A & L operate their strange (?) system and where do the funds I transfer one day and which do not credit to the following day go to in the meantime??

Regards

Samuri_the_Shafted

TREVORCOLMAN

I have been trying to get an apology from A&L credit card since the end of June last year.

They somehow allowed someone to place two debits on my card from overseas. They were then re credited. There was a difference in the exchange rates leaving me two debts.

They have been absolutely abysmal in this matter and have done such things as send me two letters with the same date telling me different things.

They credited an amount twice, the smaller one of course and not the other lager one.

I spent ages on the phone to them to ask them to sort it out.

I got the finanical ombudsman involved and they credited my account within a few days - FUNNY THING THAT.

They have still not explained how this was allowed to happen.

Suffice to say that I have once again written to the financial ombudsman who has forwarded my letter to A&L.

Therefore I would never recommend them!

:-[

Walletwatch

This may seem perverse to you, Samuri, but it boils down to the difference between real time processing and batch processing.

Most big banks use batch processing for their main transaction flows.

This means that they bulk together all the similar transactions and process them at once.

So, one transaction flow would be debiting your acccount A - which involves checking that there are sufficient funds there because otherwise that transaction fails.

A second transaction flow, which CANNOT happen before the first, is crediting your account B - which would only happen if account A contained enough money.

So far so good?

Then of course a third transaction flow is the processing of cheque withdrawals against account A.

I think you are saying that on a particular date (the date a cheque was expected to clear) you transferred money from account A to account B, expecting it to be used to clear the cheque.

This will NOT work.  I do not believe it will work at ANY bank.  The banks have to batch process the cheques, and at the point they process them (which is first thing in the morning) they have to decide whether they are clearing or bouncing them.

If you transfer funds ON THAT DAY they will not be there when the cheque clearing batch process is run - so the cheque will bounce and you will be charged.  The fact that you subsequently bung funds into the account is irrelevant.

The 3 pm cut off time you mentioned (from Mr Astley's reply) is an interesting one - I am not sure why it needs to be 3 pm rather than midnight - but I would always expect a bank to require the funds to be there by midnight at the start of the clearing day for the cheque to be cleared.

Hope that helps.

Incidentally, if your bank allows you to have a large overdraft limit without charge (as A&L do if you have the income to support it) then you can make use of this and transfer the funds from the savings account to the current account on the day the cheque clears.  This is because the cheque will clear against the overdraft limit, but because you transfer funds before the end of the cheque clearing day (which might mean 3pm in your case!) you will not be charged interest.  Hope that also makes sense!

(E.g. overdraft limit £2,000.  Account balance at start of day = £NIL.  Cheque for £1,999 clears - notional balance -£1,999 which is within o/d limit and hence ok so cheque clears.  Transfer from savings account £2,000 comes in to clear overdraft and set balance back to £1 by end of day = no overdraft interest charged.

Agree with your explanation, Marky. The 3 p.m. timing, I feel would be down to the cut-off time the balances as of which the Bank's systems would consider when processing these clearing cheques the next day (needless to say, this will have a buffer, so the actual time might be 4 or 5 p.m.)

My guess is that any subsequent debit will update balances online (in line with the concepts of conservative banking principles) but credits would be tanked and added to the balances as part of the next day's processing.

This actually happens at times with debits as well, when sometimes, for short intervals of time, there is an outage on links between ATMs and the Banks' databases, leading to ATM withdrawals not updating balances with these debits for the downtime period.

MarkyMarkD

@Samuri: I think that WW's response clarifies the reason there is a cut-off time before midnight. It's down to the volume of transactions. You can't run a batch transaction in 0 minutes - it takes time. So if you have lots of batch transactions to run overnight, you have to schedule them in a sensible order, with time between them in case anything goes wrong.

Hence the 3pm cut off time - although it seems very early, it's probably because lots of other things have to go on between 3pm and midnight. And as WW says, it might actually be slightly later than that, but the last thing a bank is going to do it paint itself into a corner by telling you 3.45pm if it might one-day be run at 3.44pm.

Some banks may choose to process inter-account transfers on a real time, rather than a batch, basis - presumably HSBC/First Direct (actually the same bank in any case) do this. It doesn't make the batch practice unusual, though - most banks used to do it this way, and many still do so.

As I've pointed out, there is a workaround with A&L and other banks if you are able to set up a suitable authorised overdraft buffer - this will avoid you having payments bounced and won't cost you anything.

@Trevor - I'm sure you realise this, but A&L credit cards are operated by MBNA so your complaint is with their services, not A&L's per se.

I'm not sure I quite understand your issue with "how this was allowed to happen". Perhaps a foreign company processed a transaction with a slightly erroneous card account number? Not that unlikely.

And each transaction is processed at the rate on the day it is processed - so there will be differences if a credit is delayed.

I had an identical situation with Halifax credit cards, and complained about the £££ I lost in the interim period, and they refunded it. I am sure that any sensible credit card provider would do the same, eventually, and this is what MBNA have done in your case. Going to the Ombudsman probably didn't make any difference!

jma_4

Just a general moan about A&L, I suppose

Went to open a first saver account for my daughter (10 months old) and was turned away at the branch as they required an appointment to see the person required to open an account. Fair enough.

Went back a week later, at the appointment time, and nobody was there to deal with the paperwork. One of the tellers did all the paperwork there and then, said he'd open the account up 'later that day'. Why they couldn't have done that the week before... ::)

Anyway, sometime later in the week, the same person phoned me to tell me they couldn't open the account 'for reasons unknown'. The 'computer' denies some accounts, based on various reasons, like address or credit rating (on a savings account?) but he couldn't give me an exact reason why. I had to book another appointment to collect the money I'd tried to open the account with!

Along rolls another weekend, I pop into the branch and the person who dealt with the paperwork isn't there. Another bank teller couldn't find the paperwork and I had to spend another half and hour in the branch while she sorted it out.

This is the branch in Reading, for anyone interested. I opened an account at another bank the same day.

omega27

Why on earth do you need a credit-check to open a savings account?! Surely birth certificate of your child, or your ID (DVLA, passport etc..) would do?