MSE News: First Direct opens current account to lower incomes

katejo

redux wrote: »

I don't care, as I have no intention of ever opening an account there.

I applied to open a TESSA savings account there in the 1990s.

About a year and a half later, for about 6 months, they started sending me patronising letters that suggested that as I was obviously too busy to make the effort to apply for their bank account, actually paradoxicallly they were the ideal bank for me as they could take care of things better than other banks.

I phoned up. I was on hold for 23 minutes before speaking to someone.

I said I had not applied for their ordinary bank account, so I was mystified at their highly patronising insults about my laziness. And as they were obviously too busy to make the effort to send me details of the product I'd actually asked for by now two years earlier, and it was now no longer as attractive as it was at the time I enquired, perhaps they would just this once make a slight effort and delete me from their inaccurate junk mailing list.

I told some friends who thought First Direct was marvellous, and they were astonished.

i agree with your friends. You were probably just unlucky. I have been with them since about 1991 and have never had any problem at all. I had to ring them on Sunday 10th to report a stolen debit card. The new one has arrived today.

cici71

It can be multiple incomes within the month as long as it totals the required amount. My salary was just shy of £1500 but my child benefit going in made up the rest and i questioned this on opening the account and they said it was fine. So no - it doesn't need to be in 1 income source.

cici71

And to those that seem to think FD is for the wealthy and elite??? Come on!!! You only needed to deposit £1500 a month - just under the national average wage. So get a grip and be realistic - you're not wealthy!! I'm with FD and i'm certainly not wealthy - i just work and earn the national average salary. I don't go flashing my card around thinking I'm a cut above the rest!! :-)

JuicyJesus

BugsyBrowne wrote: »

The length people goto for pennies on here is shocking,but then again I have to remind myself this is a moneysaving site aswell.

I can barely bring myself to use Quidco a lot of the time (I get 20p back from my Domino's pizza, whoopee doo) so people willing to screw around with their bank accounts just to get a p*ssy bit of money utterly perplex me.

Also perplexes me banks still do these offers, they must be unprofitable.

TheEffect

I'm a student and have a HSBC student account and a First Direct 1st account. I've never paid the £10 fee. First Direct have a few small perks such as £500 withdrawal limit, straight through on the phone, text messages every morning if you want them, no pin device for internet banking etc, however they also lose out with their rubbish internet banking features and crappy iPhone app.

If they improved their internet banking, they'd get much more kudos IMO.

adamc260

TheEffect wrote: »

I'm a student and have a HSBC student account and a First Direct 1st account. I've never paid the £10 fee. First Direct have a few small perks such as £500 withdrawal limit, straight through on the phone, text messages every morning if you want them, no pin device for internet banking etc, however they also lose out with their rubbish internet banking features and crappy iPhone app.

If they improved their internet banking, they'd get much more kudos IMO.

First Direct is all about the 'phone service' you get, that's what sets them out from the rest so I guess the internet plays second fiddle.

Treadmill

I bank with First Direct but have only ever rung twice, once to report a card lost and once after they contacted me when my card was cloned. The website is rather basic compared to some but you can do pretty much everything you need to on there.

Mind you though I don't have enough money to do anything clever with it, if I did maybe I'd appreciate the phone service.

Gromitt

Treadmill wrote: »

Mind you though I don't have enough money to do anything clever with it, if I did maybe I'd appreciate the phone service.

I don't know what you mean by 'clever'. I have a sizeable amount of cash, but none of it is in FD as there rates are so poor. My salary goes in and then get distributed to the banks that actually give me incentives to use them. So FD typically has a balance of about £10 - £100 for all but one day a month.

robotrobo

karlie88 wrote: »

This is what I was told too when I joined.

hi karlie.
I was also given false information from f/direct, the £1500 only needs to be paid in once, & not every month.

rossk26

To qualify for the £100 do you need to transfer 2 Direct Debits?

The thing is, currently I only have 1.

Also would I need to transfer my salary from my current bank to First Direct? As what I would like to do is keep my Halifax current account (get £5 a month!!) Then transfer the necessary £1k from Halifax into FD to qualify for the £100.

I mainly want to open a FD account for the 6% Regular Saver..

Any help is appreciated