Switching from Santander to First direct

Hazzanet

Osarkon wrote: »

When you try changing the amount via that screen you get an error message stating you need to ring to do it.

Aaah, must admit, I'd never needed to try it.

Jaywilz

BrookesAndrew wrote: »

I have just got off the phone with First direct. I wanted to switch to them because of the 100 you can get when you transfer to them and also because I don't like Santander and there customer service is terrible. I've heard a lot of people complaining about them. Just wanted to know if anybody else has switched to them and what they are like or is there somebody better to switch to? Let me know what you think. I didn't get accepted straight away they need to check a few things and then they will come back to me but fingers crossed!

I am in the exact same boat as you.. I submitted an app and they said they will get back to me sometime next week after they have done some more checks.

But it all depends on what you are looking for in terms of switching i

For customer service:

Smile/Co-op Bank
Nationwide

Tend to come out on top


If you are looking for loads of branches:

Barclays
Lloyds TSB (well not sure after the split)
Natwest

Hope you get the account you are looking for though fingers crossed for you

roxy28

I have been with first direct for a few weeks, and if thats right you can not amend
a standing order online its a bit poor.

MoneySaverLog

Well it's a good enough reason to get a golden goodbye :-)

roxy28

But it does say you CAN amend standing orders online, very misleading.

jamesd

The problem here isn't so much any bank as your question and intent. It's fine to switch to FD but why use only one current account at one bank? Better to try a few and eventually move to the one that you prefer, while also keeping a second one you can use if there are problems with the first.

In general I prefer NatWest online banking to Santander and FD. NW has a lower daily limit, only £10,000 per day for all outgoing transactions by Faster Payments. FD is £40,000 and Santander £100,000. That'll matter for some people.

Suspect transaction handling varies quite a bit. I've banked with NW for a long, long time and have never had any contact from or to their fraud team. Santander seems to operate on a hair trigger based on automatic rules and has pretty poor consistency of service in such cases at the times when I was encountering them. FD is a bit on the holier than thou side. Can be very thorough and I like that but on another occasion a person soon to depart on their holiday completely screwed it up and started to not only close my current and savings accounts but also change the terms of my mortgage. After a complaint they then did a better job and cancelled all that and apologised. FD's routine customer service is good, though, in general. Shame they had given advance consent to the same transactions that the fraud people used to close the account just a week after consent was given... Of course all transactions involved were both lawful and in full compliance with the terms and conditions of all three banks.

If you want an easy life with transaction types that aren't particularly common or larger value transactions I suggest not using FD or HSBC (they share the same fraud team). Too much chance of them just deciding that they don't like lawful transactions in accordance with the account T&C and closing the account. Not worth the hassle. If all you do is direct debits and salary FD or any of the others would be fine, it's basic banking and not something they are likely to ever be interested in.

For more use of investments from the current account, better to pick say NW or even Santander. Santander, while inconsistent and not great, haven't actually ever got things to the point where they said they wanted to close the account. Or of course one of the other banks that I've no personal experience with.

But the main point here is, the banks and others are different. Don't stick with one, explore many and pick whichever two you prefer.

Osarkon

roxy28 wrote: »

But it does say you CAN amend standing orders online, very misleading.

You can amend standing orders online normally.

But you can't in the above example as its the standing order for the regular saver. I imagine because the amount you can deposit increases each month they've made it so that you need to ring to amend to keep things simple.

yangptangkipperbang

Jaywilz wrote: »

But it all depends on what you are looking for in terms of switching i

For customer service:


Nationwide

Tend to come out on top

.............this is a joke I presume ?

Jaywilz

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

.............this is a joke I presume ?

Nope not a joke.. He asked for alternatives for first direct and generally you find Smile/Co-op Bank/Nationwide right behind first direct for customer service.

mrmajika

Osarkon wrote: »

You can amend standing orders online normally.

But you can't in the above example as its the standing order for the regular saver.

That's exactly it. Standing orders can now be immediately updated via internet banking, with the exception of the Regular Saver.

They've said that their internet banking is getting overhauled in September, but haven't released any further details yet. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out.