How reliable is Kent Reliance BS - looking for existing customer to reassure me!

colsten

I reckon KRBS are perfectly ok and safe, if a bit quaint in the way they process some things. I am into my 4th Regular Saver with them now.

achilles1

I had to close my savings account with them after a few days of opening it because they have a call centre in India and I do not trust those.

pawncob

Things haven't changed. They're still the worst bank in the UK. My 1 year bond matured in November 2016 and I requested that the funds be paid to my nominated account. Apparently this account failed the electronic verification process(?) (It's Nationwide!) , but they didn't follow that up. They then placed the funds in a further 1 year bond and told me that I had 14 days to notify them if this wasn't what I wanted. Six days into December, and still no funds. Emails only get an acknowledgement, and the chap on the phone, having confirmed the details of the nominated account, then insisted that I send him a bank statement to prove the account existed. (Why would anyone deliberately send details of a non existent account?). After half an hour on the phone I got hold of the Manager, who sorted it out and arranged for the funds to be transferred. The strange thing is EXACTLY the same thing happened last year when a previous bond matured. Do they put maturing funds into another bond in the hope that the customer will leave them there? STAY AWAY FROM THIS OUTFIT IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY.

Hexidor

Opened an account with KRBS and thought that I'd transferred the required £1000 from my bank. Tried to go online but password wasn't accepted. Spoke to call centre (India) who said my account wasn't funded. A check with my bank confirmed this.

Call centre said they would have to investigate and call back, which they did. There was a fault with KRBS' system. Was given a new customer ID and later on received an email including my full name giving details of the account I needed to fund within 7 days. It also said that I would receive a letter within 5 days allowing me to access my account online (still waiting).

In view of other poster's comments about depositing money into an account using details given in an email, I think that KRBS should allow customers to make an initial deposit of say, £10, to be topped up when they have online proof that their money has reached the account safely.

I'll update here if I have any more problems.

badger09

Merry Christmas innovate. Hope its a good one.

:xmassign::xmastree:

SeeMe

Hexidor wrote: »

Call centre said they would have to investigate and call back, which they did. There was a fault with KRBS' system. Was given a new customer ID and later on received an email including my full name giving details of the account I needed to fund within 7 days. It also said that I would receive a letter within 5 days allowing me to access my account online (still waiting).

In view of other poster's comments about depositing money into an account using details given in an email, I think that KRBS should allow customers to make an initial deposit of say, £10, to be topped up when they have online proof that their money has reached the account safely.

I'll update here if I have any more problems.

Have you found improvements or regretting your deposit with them?

ColdIron

Poster hasn't logged in since December 24th, I wouldn't hold my breath

Bongo-HiFi

I just opened an account last Wednesday 9th May and its OK so far.
I completed the online application on the 9th and received an email with a reference number followed the same day with another email with my new account details and giving up to 7 days to make the initial deposit. The email said I would receive a user ID in the post within 5 days but arrived on Friday 11th.
I made an initial deposit from my bank electronically on the 9th and received a text the following morning 10th confirming it had been received, so I then made a further transfer from my bank for a larger sum.
I received my User ID on Friday 11th, great! I logged on set up a a password and secret word, I could see the initial deposit but hey where was the other sum? So I rang the indian call centre where the guy gave me a load of unintelligible waffle about BACs, Clearing houses and something to do with Nat West Blah Blah before eventually telling me that transfers can take up to 3 working days. How come, when my initial deposit can be in my account the following day, does it now need to take 3 working days for my further deposit? He put me on hold "While he has a look out the back" Honest I'm not making it up! He comes back and says he cant see my money anywhere. After an anxious exchange he then changes his explanation to reassuring me that it will be in my account by the close of the day, it wasn't!
This morning Monday 14th, I get a text confirming that my deposit has been received and upon logging on can see to be fair that it appears to have been back credited to the 11th.
So reasonably OK so far.
The website is basic, but that makes it easy to navigate, with basic functions such as viewing the account, transactions, making transfers/withdrawals, sending messages etc which is about all that I need.
A word of caution regarding timescales for withdrawals (and perhaps deposits too). When clicking on to make a transfer, the page has a table of transaction times ranging from "same day" for before 13.15 up to 3 working days or more which is inexplicably dependant upon the transaction amount, the higher the amount the longer the time, why?

The website also points out that it goes into "read only mode" in other words you can only look at it between the hours of 11pm and 4am and has regular times when the website is closed for "routine maintenance" the times currently displayed are mostly for long periods of time over weekends.

Interestingly the small print in the T&C's mentions the varying timescales for processing withdrawals without actually giving any good reason for them. It does also say that they can adjust these timescales to make them "more favourable to you" so I have messaged them for an explanation of why the timescales when most 21st century banks can transfer funds at a click, and why it should need to take longer for larger sums? I have asked that they adjust these timescales "more favourably to me" ie on the same day irrespective of time and amount. I await a reply (we aim to reply within 3 working days)

Otherwise, so far Kent Reliance may be ok if you can accept the somewhat old fashioned (not necessarily a bad thing) and idiosyncratic way of operating.

Bongo-HiFi

Reply from KR;

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Kent Reliance account.

Further to your query we would like to inform you that deposits through electronic transfers will take 1-2 working days to reflect on our records as we do not have our own clearing house and we use NatWest bank as our clearing house.

Withdrawals can take up to 4 working days depending on the time and the amount of the withdrawal as we do not have our own clearing house.

Please Note: You can request for a withdrawal over the phone before 1:15PM on a working day and the funds can be made available in your bank account end of business the same working day irrespective of the amount through CHAPS transfer with a fee of £10.

For further assistance you can either send a secure message or call us on our customer services number 03451203223.

And they have now dropped the 1.3% rate to 1.25%

Speedy35

My husband and I have had online sav8ngs accounts for about 2 years, and have never had any problems. They regularly seem to introduce new accounts with slightly higher rates, and we just open a new account, transfer most of the balance online, and then send them a secure message to transfer the balance and close the original account. It works every time .