Has Anyone Moved to Santander 1 2 3?

dreaming

Shamsan wrote: »

Thank you for that warning Pittspitch! V useful.

Thank you innovate i will look into the others. We have a Santander branch locally which I find helpful - not sure which others are. We don't qualify for the Flex Direct as we can't put £1000 in every month from an external source :-) Also the 5% is for 1 year only, and there are other strings, though it's good otherwise.

Does the outgoing bank ring you and try and talk you into staying? This was one of my least favourite bits about energy switching. Oddly only one of the "old" companies did this, the one I wasn't expecting to!

Hi Shamsan.

Are you sure you can't get a FlexDirect - as well as a 123 account? I have just opened my 123 account and thought that I couldn't "afford" the FlexDirect (have had ordinary Flexaccount for years) as I don't have £1k "income" (have just retired and still paying tax on my pensions) but then realised that all I had to do was swap the money from Nationwide to Santander each month then back again - thus fulfilling requirements for both accounts - and enough to cover the direct debits at Santander. So I now have £20k in the 123 (with qualifying direct debits to cover monthly fee with cashback), and £2.5k in FlexDirect. Any interest will be swept into a savings account. I can't believe that having worked for Nationwide for many years until this summer (although admittedly not in the retail sector) I did not "get" how these things worked. It is only through being on this forum and reading different ideas and experiences that it clicked with me. Some people have multiple accounts and just seem to swap the same £1k around each one but I want to keep things relatively simple (although I am looking at things in a different light now).

By the way, I wouldn't go through the "switch" process. I just set up the direct debits on the 123 account myself (took a couple of days) then cancelled them on my old (Flex) account then upgraded the Nationwide account to FlexDirect.

Archi_Bald

Shamsan wrote: »

Further feedback - the other 3% accounts mentioned have an interest ceiling of £5000 in the account.

Yeah but you can have 3 of them, at each of the banks - - so can stick £45K into these in total.

And, as has been mentioned, use the same £1K (or £500 twice etc) to fulfill the monthly deposit requirements.

Crater

dreaming wrote: »

Hi Shamsan.

Are you sure you can't get a FlexDirect - as well as a 123 account? I have just opened my 123 account and thought that I couldn't "afford" the FlexDirect (have had ordinary Flexaccount for years) as I don't have £1k "income" (have just retired and still paying tax on my pensions) but then realised that all I had to do was swap the money from Nationwide to Santander each month then back again - thus fulfilling requirements for both accounts - and enough to cover the direct debits at Santander. So I now have £20k in the 123 (with qualifying direct debits to cover monthly fee with cashback), and £2.5k in FlexDirect. Any interest will be swept into a savings account. I can't believe that having worked for Nationwide for many years until this summer (although admittedly not in the retail sector) I did not "get" how these things worked. It is only through being on this forum and reading different ideas and experiences that it clicked with me. Some people have multiple accounts and just seem to swap the same £1k around each one but I want to keep things relatively simple (although I am looking at things in a different light now).

By the way, I wouldn't go through the "switch" process. I just set up the direct debits on the 123 account myself (took a couple of days) then cancelled them on my old (Flex) account then upgraded the Nationwide account to FlexDirect.

Thanks I will keep a note of that and keep an eye on our cash flow ... the main catch is administrative, as we don't have a regular income and although it's not bad at the monent (hence my interest in an alternative bank account) that could change. At present like you I don't want to have to keep too many balls in the air, but i might get better at it.

I'm wondering about "going through the process" or dong it myself, but quite a few people seem to be using the new process without problems ... we won't be closing the Nationwide account, we'll be switching from an older account with Barclays that still has ancient Direct Debits on it and we have no particular reason to stay there.

Crater

Archi_Bald wrote: »

Yeah but you can have 3 of them, at each of the banks - - so can stick £45K into these in total.

And, as has been mentioned, use the same £1K (or £500 twice etc) to fulfill the monthly deposit requirements.

The others are really savings account which would be fine per se but at present we don't have £45,000 to park - will defo be looking at these alternatives in the future though

eskbanker

Shamsan wrote: »

The others are really savings account which would be fine per se but at present we don't have £45,000 to park - will defo be looking at these alternatives in the future though

Not sure how you can conclude this - they're all marketed as current accounts and have full current account facilities, minimum funding requirements, etc, in the same way as the 123. While the 123 undoubtedly has some features that distinguish it from the others, I'm not sure they could accurately be described as making it more like a current account than a savings one?

cepheus

I'm just in the process of changing to the 123 account myself after many decades with Nat West. Unfortunately I didn't use the automatic current account transfer option so I have to transfer the DDs myself. What put me off was a statement during application implying my old NW account would be shut down if I chose that option.

Anyway seems OK so far. Not sure if they will simply accept me swapping £500 back and fro in and out every month though. The other risk is that the 3% will be dropped.

eskbanker

cepheus wrote: »

Unfortunately I didn't use the automatic current account transfer option so I have to transfer the DDs myself. What put me off was a statement during application implying my old NW account would be shut down if I chose that option.

Yes, that's the new standard switching service, applicable between any two banks since last month.

cepheus wrote: »

Not sure if they will simply accept me swapping £500 back and fro in and out every month though.

No reason why not if you comply with that and the other Ts&Cs!

cepheus wrote: »

The other risk is that the 3% will be dropped.

True, but while it is a variable rate product it'll be quite challenging for them to dissociate the product name from the tiered interest rates if they felt the need to try!

cepheus

Actually come to think of it I wasn't too impressed at them sending me two identical r85 helpsheets in the post I think one should have been the actual r85 form !

Archi_Bald

cepheus wrote: »

I think one should have been the actual r85 form !

You can download the form from the Internet.

ozzage

Look into the cashback sites too, as you can generally get cashback from Quidco or Topcashback if you open a 123 current account (and more if you also open the 123 credit card)