Icesave account ... Account holder opinions/experiences would be greatly appreciated.

calisto

Just like to say I called Icesave customer services today and was pleasantly surprised to get through immediately, and to someone who knew what they were doing - contrary to past anecdotes.

I clarified with them that they do not charge for CHAPS transfers in, only £30 for CHAPS out, as this wasn't clear from their website - it implied there would be charges either way.

As I have £150k to transfer from Coventry I would lose between £70 and £94 interest using 3 or 4 day BACS, wheras a CHAPS only costs £30 and will be done same day providing its done before 12AM, so no interest lost :T

[Deleted User]

Tommaso46 wrote: »

"Anyone got anything bad to say about the Icesave account ?!! "

YES I opened one about about 3 months ago and here's what I discovered:

It takes a minimum of 10 days to transfer money in/out. So if you need money in a hurry you're sunk unless you pay extra for the quick transfer method.

After a while I found it was impossible to carry out transactions on my account. I was able to log in and see my account, but putting money on or taking it out was impossible. I have other online accounts and never experienced this problem before.

I had Icesave's IT people investigate the problem. This took WEEKS during which, my account could not be used.

They came to the conclusion that because I use a dialup connection from home (I am not happy about accessing my private accounts from my work computer), it was taking too long for their pages to download and I was getting timed out every time.

THis makes no sense to me because at the beginning I did not have this problem and, as I say, I operate a number of other accounts online wiithout such problems.

Icesave seem extremely proud of their super-secure website. Unfortunately this is based on their assumption that everyone is using broadband all the time.

In the end, Icesave forced me to CLOSE THE ACCOUNT because I was unable to operate it.

BE WARNED!

Mmmm... <a minimum of 10 days to transfer money in/out> I made my first deposit instruction on Friday 20th April, and the money arrived at my icesave a/c today (24th April) less than 3 full business days :j Personally I'm VERY impressed so far . I have just made my second deposit instruction, and according to icesave, the money will arrive in my a/c on the 27th April (3 business days from now) Fingers crossed..

By the way, what is all this "pushing money out" and "pulling money in" business? I haven't seen this when I log in.... It's just money TO and FROM I can only assume that icesave have made some alterations... Anyway, so far I'm a happy customer....:D

Primrose

We opened an account with them last year when they were overwhelmed with new business so it took a while to get up and running. Since then no problems. Had one major panic when I set up a rather large direct debit into Icesave from my current account. It wasn't clear from the screen whether it had been activated so I duplicated the transaction, only to find it had gone through twice which would have left me with an enormous overdraft. I phoned the Help Line and they explained very quickly and efficiently how to put the problem right, talking me through the process while I had my screen open in front of me. (All I actually had to do was to go to the bottom of a screen and delete one of the two outstanding transactions). So, very happy with our account so far.

chardonnay_2

masonic wrote: »

Can I ask why you're willing to accept Cahoots blanket denial of having ever received the funds? I'd be just a little sceptical of that. After all, they made that statment before receiving the trace from Landsbanki - were they just telling you what would happen, in theory, based on what Landsbanki were assumed to have done? You won't know what has really happened until the investigation is complete.

Obviously, Landsbanki have not communicated with your parents well, for example, I'm sure no single named person exists with the title of 'compaints officer', but you can still write a letter addressed to the complaints officer. You also don't know whether or not Landsbanki changed the account number and sort code in any way. It could be that an adviser was trying to explain what sometimes needs to be done to some banks internal account numbers (for example, with A&L, the first digit of the account number is actually the last digit of the sort code) and it didn't, in fact, apply to your parents at all.

Other than the fact their customer services department have given your parents the runaround over this, I don't think you have much cause for complaint, at least not yet. To be honest, I think your parents can still count themselves very lucky, because when you screw up the account number you are sending a large sum of money to, the situation can become a lot worse than this.

masonic, i assure you my parents had been communicating with cahoot throughout. the op asked for experiences with icesave and perhaps i felt it was important to inform him of their experience. hopefully this is not a true representation of the service others will receive.

chardonnay_2

codetown wrote: »

I think we should be careful and not accuse people without knowing exactly what happened.

What is sure is that:
a) ICESAVE seems reliable and offering good services.
b) Everything goes smoothly if you use the correct coordinates for your linked account.
c) ICESAVE might be not very prompt in dealing with customers errors or with non standard procedures (I assume the case of a customers inputting a wrong number for their account represents less than 0.01% of the cases, as everyone is extra careful on that!!!!).

I am sure that once your case is cleared whoever had the money for the last month will give it back with interests, and next time your family will be more careful with dealing with important numbers!

But let's not accuse ICESAVE (or Cahoots for what matters) to steal money as this is certainly not the case!

codetown, i did not accuse iceave of theft. i was merely pointing out to the op the experience my parents had have with their customer services dept. icesave have now provided my parents with the trace which showed that icesave had changed the sort code and account number to completely different numbers inorder to make the account number the correct length to go through. therefore this resulted in the money going missing for a month.

chardonnay_2

my parents received the money back on tuesday after a month of worry and uncertainty. they will still be formally complaining to icesave and cahoot regarding the way the matter was dealt with. i will update my post rather than hijack the op thread

Stompa

Deleted_User wrote: »

By the way, what is all this "pushing money out" and "pulling money in" business?

It's to do with how a transfer is instigated.

A transfer from Bank A to Bank B instigated at Bank A would be a push.

A transfer from Bank A to Bank B instigated at Bank B would be a pull.

JammyB_3

I signed up to Icesave the other week, and so far have been inundated with about 6 different letters. Somehow they have managed to set me up with two direct debits, including one from a Barclays account - impressive considering I've never banked with Barclays in my life!

I've e-mailed them. Hopefully they won't !!!! up my £250 deposit which should be going in any day now, since at least my other DD seemed to be set up ok.

zweety

Is there a minimum amount requiered when we transfer money to icesave ?

nilrem_2

I have had an Icesave account for sometime and have had no problems at all, I think the transferring of cash is straight forward and fair it does take about 3 days for them to transfer cash from ones bank account to Icesave but when you do the transfer they do state which day it will take place so that you can plan ahead so to speak.

IMHO it's best to set up the transfer on a Monday or Tuesday otherwise the money may be in 'limbo' for the weekend which is a 'dead' day for banking!