MSE News: Current account switching up 22% as consumers wise up to better deals

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More than one million current accounts have been switched during the first year of the seven-day switching regime

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'Current account switching up 22% as consumers wise up to better deals'




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karlie88

Between 3 family members, we have switched a total of 15 current accounts in the past year.

Can't really fault the switching service process, smooth and minimal effort required (apart from M&S; it takes 2 tedious phone calls to switch with them).

Pincher

A whole host of notifications turned up, confirming the direct debits have been changed for the utilities, council tax, annual subscriptions etc.

You may not feel guilty about creating hassle for all these people, but you should worry if they make a mistake. I don't think my council does it automatically. In fact, they seem to have farmed their admin functions to somewhere in Northampton. I send forms to Northampton these days, not to the Town Hall locally.

Northampton, are they cannibals out there?

Consumerist

I must admit I still prefer to "switch" the old fashioned way - manually moving DDs and SOs and deciding for myself whether I want to close the original account. This type of switch is not recorded in the stats because the Switching Service hasn't been used.

If you open a number of interest-paying current accounts - a recommended process by some on MSE - these new accounts will not be included in the switching stats but that doesn't mean that bank customers aren't on the lookout for "good" accounts and moving to them.

Steve_xx

Consumerist wrote: »

I must admit I still prefer to "switch" the old fashioned way - manually moving DDs and SOs and deciding for myself whether I want to close the original account. This type of switch is not recorded in the stats because the Switching Service hasn't been used.

If you open a number of interest-paying current accounts - a recommended process by some on MSE - these new accounts will not be included in the switching stats but that doesn't mean that bank customers aren't on the lookout for "good" accounts and moving to them.

The only problem with that is that some of the inducer accounts wont give you the inducement unless you switch and allow them to close the old account.

But there would be nothing to stop you from doing all of the moving yourself, perhaps leaving one standing order so the receiving bank has at least one order to change.

waqasahmed

Steve_xx wrote: »

The only problem with that is that some of the inducer accounts wont give you the inducement unless you switch and allow them to close the old account.

But there would be nothing to stop you from doing all of the moving yourself, perhaps leaving one standing order so the receiving bank has at least one order to change.

This.

First Direct, give the £125 incentive if you close another bank down

I was cool with this, because I recently opened a Club Lloyds account (I already had a classic account) So I just switched my balance of £0.00, my zero standing orders and d/d's and closed the account down entirely

It's interesting why people are mainly switching to Halifax. Could it be because of it's well advertised (and televised) £100 bribe?? When I opened a Halifax reward account, it was instead an "upgrade" I didn't get the £100 incentive, but I do get the fiver extra per month

Im not so fond of entirely closing down accounts either (Aside from that one scenario above), purely because most of my accounts benefit me in some way, shape or form

Id be fine with opening a NatWest account, only to have it closed though!

minislim

well my predictions for who had the most losses was correct!

Natwest!

for far too many years Natwest has basically took the mickey out of its existing customers by offering them very very little for the money that they have saved within them.

only now they have realised with the masses who have left them and started offering existing customers the same sort of deals they offer new ones..

but thats still rubbish

they offer very little in the form of deals for new customers.