£50 to open first Direct current account

weaver

Sorry if this in the wrong place - please move if it is

In Good Housekeeping magazine I found a black flyer for First Direct Bank

Open a current account with a £100 cheque guarentee card (doubles as a debit card ) Withdraw upto £500 a day free of charge at branches of HSBC and LINK in the UK.

You can arrange to have your salary paid into the account,set up standing orders & direct debits, use of telephone banking & Online banking.
No charges for cheques and cash machine withdrawals,standing orders & direct debits. Overdraft of £500 free of fees. Interest on amount borrowed is 10.9% EAR variable.

£50 as a special welcome when you open a First direct Bank account before 31st August 2005

Call on 0800 24 24 24 or visit Firstdirect.com quoting reference LV139


Terms
*open a first direct bank account and transfer your salary/income before 31st august 2005 and we will add £50 to your account. One payment of £50 per customer joining first direct for the 1st time. £50 will be paid into joint accounts. The incentive will be paid within 28 days of fulfilling the criteria.*


Im a bit miffed as I only got £35 for opening an account with them a while back - could have got £50 - oh well better than nothing

Milarky

weaver,

Better placed in 'budgeting and current accounts' section perhaps, but no problem with it here.

The only [slight] drawback might be the additional time it can take to have your salary set up to go into this account once opened. It could take about a month - so you are talking about eight weeks to receive the payment.

First Direct is definitely worth trying out for the bank account as long as you aren't too fussy about the rate of interest [it is 2% if paying in over £1000 per month] or don't keep much in there anyway. Their online banking is very good as well. [This could be one of Martin's weekly tips possibly]

callmybill

Milarky wrote:

weaver,


First Direct is definitely worth trying out for the bank account as long as you aren't too fussy about the rate of interest [it is 2% if paying in over £1000 per month] or don't keep much in there anyway. Their online banking is very good as well. [This could be one of Martin's weekly tips possibly]

I've transfered my banking from First Direct because of the poor interest rates, a savings account balance below £499 only pays 0.08% interest.
This is very poor considering HSBC (FD's owners) made £9.6 billion in profits.

I now bank with Alliance & Leicester, customer service is not as good as FD's but interest rates are better for now.

As for 'online banking' FD will always win, with A & L it's a little slow.

Curry_Queen

I received a letter from them this morning offering the £50 incentive to open an account by 1st September and was wondering how best to take advantage of this but at the same time I don't want to actually change current accounts as I'm very happy with Lloyds.

Would I be able to just transfer a regular amount into it, then take it back out again, or would they expect to see some normal banking transactions taking place, i.e. DD's purchases etc.

I have a feeling there's a catch to all this as it says on the bottom of the letter:

"The incentive will be paid into your new account once the salary or income quoted on your application form is regularly paid into your account."

Therefore, in reality, they could wait as long as 6mths to actually pay you the incentive!