Slip-ups when moving money to better places

schiff

I'm just emerging from a couple of days of what has seemed at times to be a nightmare. So this may be a bit of a ramble. But I think there may be bits of useful information here and there, so let's go.

The basics: like many on here I had the max in two accounts at Santander, so for the past month I've been shovelling my money elsewhere to regular savers and the usual current accounts. All has gone relatively smoothly. Until Bank of Scotland, which requires the two direct debits or no interest.

Opened the first and deposited my £5K. Set up - or so I thought - two DDs, one to BT (broadband etc) and the other to Barclaycard (CC). The BT DD appeared in my list of DDs at BoS but not that for Barclaycard, so I checked with Barclaycard that my DD with them was OK. Got the confirmation a couple of weeks ago by secure message. But their DD still didn't appear in the list at BoS. I was being naive at this stage and had a lesson to learn!

A credit appeared in my Barclaycard account for the correct amount and on the right day - Monday of this week. And it clearly said You've paid £**.**. But there was nothing at my BoS account, not even in pending and it still wasn't on the list.

This was when the nightmare started and I was making alternate phone calls to both parties, trying to fathom out what had gone wrong, it took hours and wasn't doing my heart nor blood pressure much good! Indian accents and broad Scottish didn't help.

Barclaycard said - and it was said by two or more people I spoke to - that they don't notify the paying bank in advance, they just ask for payment three days before. Bank of Scotland told me that was simply not true and that they would refuse payment.

So I escalated my conversations with Barclaycard to a formal complaint and got the services of a head of Customer Care. Some minutes after my call, she phoned back and accepted that Barclaycard were at fault. After negotiating my compensation (which was quite generous and more than enough - I had told her of the loss of interest for a month on £5K at 5%) I agreed to my payment being taken by FP as it was simply not possible to be taken by DD and, it being so near to the end of November, I had no hope of setting up another DD to take effect prior to 30/11.

That was initially taken from my debt with Barclaycard (it's a stooz) but they have reversed it today (I insisted) and my compensation is now in my BoS account.

I had another BoS account opened on 11/11. The same situation I'm afraid - my naivety again. One DD was OK, the other was 'absent' from the list. I had cancelled a DD to a charity at Santander and re-started it with BoS a couple of weeks ago. But I learn in an e-mail from the charity this morning that as I'm on their list as having a DD to them, I can't start another one, even to a different bank. I had left it all too late again.

So, for the time being I've withdrawn most of my money from BoS back to Santander (where, ironically, I now have over £40K in the two accounts - though that will change on December 1st). And I shall be monitoring the unlisted DDs at BoS very regularly. The due dates for payment are 21/12 so there is time.

The interest 'lost' at BoS is £35 in total but the compensation amply covers that with some more for my suffering!

I suppose the lesson from all this - which I hope will help others - is to concentrate above all on the direct debits.

TY - I feel better for that!

takman

That's why it's much better to use Tesco savings accounts for your Direct Debits because you have more control over them.

schiff

I do need my DDs at Bank of Scotland for the interest, not needed at Tesco (accounts I've already got). So..........

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

tempus_fugit

That's the thing, if you have existing direct debits with companies you don't cancel them and set up new ones generally, you contact the company and give them the details of the new bank account that the funds are to be deducted from. It's the payee company that administers direct debits, not the bank.

darkidoe

eh Why didn't you just use the switching service to grab some bonus payments? It should be nice and easy that way.

Zanderman

darkidoe wrote: »

eh Why didn't you just use the switching service to grab some bonus payments? It should be nice and easy that way.

There are no switching bonuses for BoS are there?

So the only incentive to use switching would be to switch DDs - but if splitting one 123 account across more than one BoS account that wouldn't work anyway, as some would still have to be manually moved.

schiff

darkidoe wrote: »

eh Why didn't you just use the switching service to grab some bonus payments? It should be nice and easy that way.

Generally speaking there is no interest on accounts you switch to in order to get the cash bonus. For the moment my spare cash is still in Santander for the 1.5%. When it gets down to a reasonable level I will do a switch somewhere.

Midland45

schiff wrote: »

I do need my DDs at Bank of Scotland for the interest, not needed at Tesco (accounts I've already got). So..........

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

You need to re-read takmans advice, and open some savings accounts as he has stated. All the information is here on the forums on how this makes things a lot easier.

SuperAllyB

If that's your idea of a nightmare, I'd gladly swap lives with you!

Katiehound

Of course you can have more than 2 DDs from BOS, so you might have very easily and quickly set up 2 from Mr T savings and once the other DDs had kicked in you could cancel the T ones. Since we are talking only, maybe £1 each ,you would still have had the bulk of the interest to pay major DDs.

I have to say as soon as I opened the BOS accounts & I had the sort code and a/c number I transferred money and set up the DDs.

In my experience the charity DDs can take a while to set but transferring an existing one shouldn't take long.

takman

schiff wrote: »

I do need my DDs at Bank of Scotland for the interest, not needed at Tesco (accounts I've already got). So..........

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

I can't believe someone with so many posts doesn't know about Tesco Savings accounts!. If you open tesco savings accounts (not current accounts) you can use these to setup Direct Debits to fund the accounts.