New AA ISA 3.5% service

oldfella

if you are concerned about loosing interest for the cheque covering the initial deposit, suggest you open a standard savings account first, then once that is available open the ISA, the deposit for that can be a FP direct from your bank.

goodanna

My only gripe is that when you try & put money in the account it takes about 55 years to land in the account, but other than that everything is sound.

10_66

VT82 wrote: »

...Does anyone have any knowledge on AA's speed/procedure in opening ISAs?

I asked this on one of the other AA ISA threads (there seems to be several of them!), someone posted back to say that from applying online to getting the funds credited took a couple of weeks. When you apply online, that creates a pre-filled form which they send out to you to be signed and returned with the cheque. This is one of things putting me off using them. It wouldn't be so bad if you could open it with £1 cheque and then add to it later, but their minimum opening requirement is £2,5K.

DragonQ

goodanna wrote: »

My only gripe is that when you try & put money in the account it takes about 55 years to land in the account, but other than that everything is sound.

Are you depositing via the AA online banking service or are you using the online banking service of the bank you're transferring from?

The former will be slow (3-5 days), the latter will be fast (same/next day).

10_66

DragonQ wrote: »

Are you depositing via the AA online banking service or are you using the online banking service of the bank you're transferring from?

The former will be slow (3-5 days), the latter will be fast (same/next day).

Do you not have to make additional payments into the account via the aa requesting the funds via dd from your linked account, as this is what their terms and conditions state? Or can you ignore their t&cs and just make a payment in by FP from your bank then?

Stompa

10_66 wrote: »

Do you not have to make additional payments into the account via the aa requesting the funds via dd from your linked account, as this is what their terms and conditions state? Or can you ignore their t&cs and just make a payment in by FP from your bank then?

FWIW as far as I can see the T&C's of their non-ISA accounts say something similar, but when you log in it gives you the appropriate account number details to allow you to push funds from an external account. Unfortunately I don't know if the same applies to ISAs (in particular this one).

Update: I just gave them a call and they assure me that, apart from the initial deposit, and subject to ISA limits, funds can be pushed into this ISA.

As an existing customer I'm able to make the initial deposit from my linked account. However they say "This deposit will be made following the 10 banking days it takes to set up your Linked Account" and "Please note payments made from your Linked Account can take up to four banking days to arrive following activation". Seems awfully slow and, given that they also told me that the initial deposit might be taken earlier than the 10 days, means that the funds may end up sitting in the linked account (which in my case pays 0% interest) for quite a while.

penny_pincha

Stompa wrote: »

As an existing customer I'm able to make the initial deposit from my linked account. However they say "This deposit will be made following the 10 banking days it takes to set up your Linked Account" and "Please note payments made from your Linked Account can take up to four banking days to arrive following activation". Seems awfully slow and, given that they also told me that the initial deposit might be taken earlier than the 10 days, means that the funds may end up sitting in the linked account (which in my case pays 0% interest) for quite a while.

Thanks Stompa that is of great help to me. If it takes SOOOOOOO long for funds to reach the account I might as well put it somewhere else. As the money is sitting in a very low interest saving account :rotfl:at the moment, which isn't linked to the AA, neither am I an existing customer., I just want it to go somewhere it can earn as much interest as possible as soon as possible.

10_66

Stompa wrote: »

...However they say "This deposit will be made following the 10 banking days it takes to set up your Linked Account" and "Please note payments made from your Linked Account can take up to four banking days to arrive following activation". Seems awfully slow and, given that they also told me that the initial deposit might be taken earlier than the 10 days, means that the funds may end up sitting in the linked account (which in my case pays 0% interest) for quite a while.

This is why I didn't open one with them last year, I was hoping they might have improved things since then.

Stompa

10_66 wrote: »

This is why I didn't open one with them last year, I was hoping they might have improved things since then.

I guess it may be that the 10 days is a worst case scenario. In reality I don't think it's a big concern, if you make the minimum deposit of £2500 and have it sitting in an account earning no interest for a couple of weeks it only amounts to something like £3 loss of interest!

penny_pincha

Stompa wrote: »

if you make the minimum deposit of £2500 and have it sitting in an account earning no interest for a couple of weeks it only amounts to something like £3 loss of interest!

£3 WOW. :eek: I hadn't actually worked it out. I don't call myself Penny Pincha for nothing

I was thinking of investing the 2011-12 limit of £5340 so the loss of interest would be, well, a couple of drinks worth at least.

Just as a matter of interest, a friend has opened a Nationwide ISA last Friday and it is up and running already, Monday. She had to open a current account first but that was up and running in only 2 or 3 days too. :TThat I call fast, and Nationwide will credit your money with interest as soon as they receive your application (assuming that your funds are free to move).