First Trust Bank

Simpson

IvanOpinion wrote:

These banks still rely on customer apathy otherwise they would have no customers at all. Get yourself a bank account that does not have these silly charges (Nationwide, Abbey, Halifax etc. etc.) there are loads out there. And don't be scared to change ... it is dead easy, make an appointment, bring all the relevant informaiton with you and it can be done and dusted within an hour.

Ivan

It's not as easy as it seems when dealing with first trust. I'm currently (for the past month) trying to switch to Abbey, but first trust are refusing to forward them my mandate. Abbey asked me to go into my branch and demand the mandate, but they printed off a full dd history covering the past 18 years which I now have to manually sift through to identify which are current.

They also phoned me about a week ago to offer me this fantastic new account for just £8/month. Suffice to say I laughed at the deal and hung up the phone.

ooo000ooo

My missus has her mortgage through the first trust, because we're buying a house in both our names she needed a mortgage statement. after waiting a week and no sign of it she phoned her branch up to be told it hadn't been sent and they were waiting for £10 to be paid before sending it. She rang the mortgage department who told her they couldn't take the money from her account and told her to go back to her branch who could, the same branch who had held it for a week!!
Due to them moving the goal posts at the last minute on a previous mortgage application even though they had been informed of exactly what we were doing we lost a house we really wanted, we ended up going to the nationwide for our new mortgage and the missus will be closing any account she has with them.

blondie21

how easy is it to change accounts to either the halifax or alliance and leicester? i have alot of direct debits for telephone, rates , electric, endowment etc....would they do all the leg work for you ?

IvanOpinion

blondie21 wrote:

how easy is it to change accounts to either the halifax or alliance and leicester? i have alot of direct debits for telephone, rates , electric, endowment etc....would they do all the leg work for you ?

When I changed to Abbey I simply took information down about each of my direct debits (I had about 15), who they were with, how much they were for and (if I had it) postal address information. I had made an appointment for the Saturday morning and the girl at the Abbey filled in all the forms for me and sorted out any informaiton I was missing (I just kept signing bits of paper). She also organised a temporary cheque book, temporary free overdraft facilities etc. I walked out about 1 hour later with all the paper work done, they even posted it all for me, and (with the exception of one direct debit) everything went exactly as expected.

I would guess that Happifax or the Sprogget and Sylvester would offer similar services.

Ivan

D.A.

When I transferred to the Halifax from the Northern, the only problems were those caused by the Northern! Halifax did a superb job - the Northern on the other hand were pretty incompetent.

Wouldn't stop me transferring again though.