First Direct Account - needs salary???

EarthBoy

First Direct will tell you that the £1000 has to be income or salary because they want you to use them as your main account, not just to get the £100/£125 bonus. However, many people have got the bonus just by transferring the £1000 from another account. It's likely that their systems can't tell the difference between salary and any other credits, so they pay the bonus anyway.

Biggles

EarthBoy wrote: »

First Direct will tell you that the £1000 has to be income or salary because they want you to use them as your main account, not just to get the £100/£125 bonus. However, many people have got the bonus just by transferring the £1000 from another account. It's likely that their systems can't tell the difference between salary and any other credits, so they pay the bonus anyway.

Correct. None of the banking systems know or care what the funds are that are coming in, and happily accept FPS transfers from another account, nor do they know or care how long the money remains there. Mine leaves again (instantaneously) by a transfer back out to my main bank a/c (leaving £300 there to fund the Regular Saver in the case of FD, obviously, as that was too good to miss out on).

Gromitt

I remember that FD used to say that income was defined as any deposit of "BACS Direct Credit". So if you had your wages paid into another bank account and transferred them, it wasn't eligible.

However, I don't think this is the reality, its just what the staff were told to say.

Plus, the company I work for now pays me using faster payments (as of January this year), as they say it saves them money and means they can initiate the transfers on the working day before the due date.

It did cause some upset, but only because people had bills setup for the day they were usually paid rather than the date they were due to be paid (ie, the date on the payslip).

xylophone

I am sure that we would all be delighted to know that HMRC did not regard interest/dividends as taxable income......:)

With regard to FD, a transfer from another account works perfectly well - in fact you can have income paid as usual into an existing bank account, have £1000 sent over to yet another account to obtain that bank's incentive, then immediately send that over to FD.

It would be worth switching a couple of DDs to the First Direct in order to obtain the (now £125) incentive ( http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-2390179/First-Direct-bumps-golden-hello-new-customers-125--accept-wait-rival-offers.html) - part of the £1000 could be kept there to fund them - part of it could be used to fund a regular saver.

Use the FD switching service. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4741989

You might also want to consider the ISA offering if you have built up several years' worth of subscriptions.

YsaT

I'm paid in cash at work and I just put it into my First Direct account sometimes via HSBC branch, sometimes through my other current account via faster payments and I still got my joining incentive. I did put that I was paid by cash when it asked about salary in the application though.

AlwaysLearnin

xylophone wrote: »

You might also want to consider the ISA offering if you have built up several years' worth of subscriptions.

Albeit that the rates will drop in Nov:

https://www2.firstdirect.com/1/2/savings/cash-isa

JohalaReewi

Also, it doesn't have to be £1000 in a lump sum. It seems to work if the total of income into the account for the month reaches £1000.

dreamdreamer

I've always manually transferred my wages from my Lloyds Vantage to my FD account each month to satisfy the paying in requirements of both. Never been an issue in all my years banking with them.

AlatMartins

Why is the £125 promotion to join First Direct only for first time customers? Why not offer it to previous customers?

Gromitt

AlatMartins wrote: »

Why is the £125 promotion to join First Direct only for first time customers? Why not offer it to previous customers?

Because previous customers already know how FD works, the level of customer service support, etc (The "First Direct Experience"). They must have been unhappy in order to leave.

FD want new people to join to "see how good they are" and hope they'll go "Wow! They are really good!" and then stay and open a full banking relationship with them.

I must admit, I was impressed with how they treated me when I opened my account back in the 90's. Speaking to them recently they seem to act more like any other bank.