Anyone tried Starling Bank?

Lioness_Twinkletoes

I use Starling as my secondary, spend account and I love them. Mostly it's the fact that any spend is instantly registered and I am notified on my phone. I can track my spending, see where I am spending the most (looking at you, Amazon), make payments and all the regular stuff. I've never had a transaction fail and their app is intuitive, fast and accessible.

Gloomendoom

I've been with Starling since shortly after they started. I use it as a secondary account, primarily for spending overseas but I am finding myself using it more and more in the UK. It works well for me.

Mr_Goodkat

I am struggling to understand why you have to migrate to the potrait card to use the Post Office cash services. I also wonder if this is even actually true in that if you tried to use the landscape card would it be rejected by the card readers in the post office (possibly) or by the counter staff (unliklely).



I am tempted to try my current card unless anyone else has tried?

adamditz

Its something to do with the chip not being suitable for there machines, I’ve tried to pay for things (with my old card) in the PO and it didn’t work, first he told me it was a credit card, to which I argued.. “are you sure it’s not a credit card” yes fairly sure...
and in the end he had to type the card number in manually and it took forever, so I can well believe there’s an issue with the old cards

eDicky

adamditz wrote: »

Its something to do with the chip not being suitable for there machines, I’ve tried to pay for things (with my old card) in the PO and it didn’t work, first he told me it was a credit card, to which I argued.. “are you sure it’s not a credit card” yes fairly sure...
and in the end he had to type the card number in manually and it took forever, so I can well believe there’s an issue with the old cards

This leads me to suspect that the new cards will not work 'without conversion' in MoneyCorp multicurrency ATMs at airports to withdraw foreign cash at the MasterCard rate, as the original Starling cards do. Usually it can be done only with credit or prepaid cards, 'true' debit cards do not give the option to avoid the awful MoneyCorp exchange rate.

Mr_Goodkat

adamditz wrote: »

Its something to do with the chip not being suitable for there machines, I’ve tried to pay for things (with my old card) in the PO and it didn’t work, first he told me it was a credit card, to which I argued.. “are you sure it’s not a credit card” yes fairly sure...
and in the end he had to type the card number in manually and it took forever, so I can well believe there’s an issue with the old cards

Interesting thanks.


Maybe it is a requirement to migrate to the new card, I was just suspicious it was a branding/marketing exercise and struggling to understand how the old card would not work but the portrait one would when there is no advertised technical difference between the two

Mr_Goodkat

eDicky wrote: »

This leads me to suspect that the new cards will not work 'without conversion' in MoneyCorp multicurrency ATMs at airports to withdraw foreign cash at the MasterCard rate, as the original Starling cards do. Usually it can be done only with credit or prepaid cards, 'true' debit cards do not give the option to avoid the awful MoneyCorp exchange rate.

Do you know why that is?

anotheruser

Would love to switch but while TSB gives me £6 odd a month free, the £0.83 I'd get from Starling just doesn't seem worth it.

K80_Black

anotheruser wrote: »

Would love to switch but while TSB gives me £6 odd a month free, the £0.83 I'd get from Starling just doesn't seem worth it.

You could do what I do - have your wages/direct debits with a high street bank that pays a bonus, then transfer the excess to starling for the interest too!

[Deleted User]

Systems go down get over it. At the end of the day it is a rack of servers in a data centre and there are any number of reasons why the service could go down, many outside of Starling's reach unless they owned the whole data centre, all the equipment and the uplink to the internet.

The best way to cover yourself is to have a backup account preferentially with another card network (visa) in case the other goes offline.