Anyone tried Starling Bank?

glider3560

glider3560 wrote: »

I put a request in on Sunday afternoon. List of payments was available by Monday evening.

Chose to transfer all the direct debits and standing orders, plus a few payees.

Standing orders and payees were set up immediately and correctly.

Direct debits will apparently take another 4-10 working days.

Annoyingly, Metro Bank sent all my standing orders through as 2nd January then monthly on the 2nd. They should've been 1st January then monthly on the 1st. Had to change them all back manually (which was far easier on Starling that Metro Bank).

Update: requested to transfer 6 direct debits. Only 4 got set up (the other two still show as 'Transfer Pending'). One was my credit card company who claim to never receive the payment details.

Otherwise, I've been very pleased. I really like the instant notifications. Already paid some cash in at the Post Office twice: immediate notification and much easier than visiting a bank branch.

Standing orders actually went out on a bank holiday yesterday, which was great. Why sit in my current account for extra days when it could be paying off my mortgage or living in a savings account?

jo_blue

Hi All

Has anyone tried Starling Business Bank accounts?

Wondered if they are any good

and

If you can pay suppliers and accounts abroad, China/Asia?india using Starling as have heard Starling will not allow payments to be made to some countries?


Many Thanks

jeff4

Opened a current account last Dec with Starling, all very straight forward until I went to use my Debit Card at a "Pay at Pump" which got declined. I was not made aware when opening this account that they would place restrictions on your card so restricting how you spend your own money to pay. I have a colleague at work that has the same account as me and did not have an issue using his card at a "Pay at Pump" station. The explanation I got from Starling when I questioned this was given as a high level of fraud, but only certain account are affected. They would not clarify any further! Never had a bank card do this to me and quiet frankly don't believe their explanation, so BE VERY AWARE OF ANY RESTRICTIONS ON YOUR MASTERCARD YOU MAY NOT BE AWARE OF.
:mad::(:(:(

J_B

jeff4 wrote: »

Opened a current account last Dec with Starling, all very straight forward until I went to use my Debit Card at a "Pay at Pump" which got declined. I was not made aware when opening this account that they would place restrictions on your card

It's in the T's & C's that you agreed to when you signed up, but of course, like me, you didn't read them.
IIRC, there's some sort of restriction on the initial few purchases and then it works seamlessly!

[Deleted User]

I use mine all the time at the pay at pumps at ASDA and I've never been declined. I've had my account since 2017 and I'm still on the old purple card. Maybe the rules have changed for new account openings and/or new teal card.

Also I use mine as my main current account with salary going in and direct debits coming out and all spending. Maybe the restrictions are just for those who don't.

notdesperatedan

I enjoyed using this account for a month BUT when I lost my card they couldn't get me reconnected to my account - even after a week of trying many different combinations! I had to close my account and get them to POST me a cheque with my balance!!!!

Prism

jo_blue wrote: »

Hi All

Has anyone tried Starling Business Bank accounts?

Wondered if they are any good

and

If you can pay suppliers and accounts abroad, China/Asia?india using Starling as have heard Starling will not allow payments to be made to some countries?


Many Thanks

I use it for my business account and its great. Unsure about foreign payments to China

d123

notdesperatedan wrote: »

I enjoyed using this account for a month BUT when I lost my card they couldn't get me reconnected to my account - even after a week of trying many different combinations! I had to close my account and get them to POST me a cheque with my balance!!!!

I suspect you’ve left a fair bit out of that story, I’ve had a replacement card after reporting a card lost and there were no issues with the new card.

What does “reconnected to my account” actually entail?

Ruth_Donaldson

I opened a business account with Starling in January. It was very smooth to get it all done. However that was about the best bit and by the beginning of February I had applied to Santander to switch. Reasons for this were as followed;

1 - I was under the impression that the account was mobile phone exclusive, with phone support. The phone support is mainly for technical reasons. If mobile phone is stolen, you can call Starling and they will freeze everything. But that is all. You can't move money, make any payments etc until you get a new mobile phone. You could use your card, provided it hasn't been your handbag that has been stolen in which case, you have no access to funds at all. Which you might need.
2 - It was a big sell that the software was going to integrate with Xero, as this was going to make reconciliation really efficient. But it didn't work, several times despite uninstalling, resetting, reinstalling, making changes to Xero etc etc. I set the same thing up on Santander, absolutely no issues and worked first time.
3 - Most of my monthly payments that I'd set up on my bank card stopped working with Starling. I couldn't work out why not, until it transpired that they were using my personal information (which they ask for account security) to verify billing. I am a limited company, so it is my company address that verifies billing. Starling suggested I changed my personal details instead (they said "this was an issue they were aware of and where trying to sort it out")
4 - Because of the way Starling have set up my personal details, I am still not switched away from them (instigated on the 1st of Feb, today is the 27th). After to'ing and fro'ing between Starling and Santander, both banks agreed to talk to each other to sort the issue out. But when Santander called Starling, they refused to speak saying that they couldn't divulge client information. The issue is, that because of the way my data is set up on Starling, it is always going to be incorrect for a normal business bank switch. So I'm in limbo land at the moment, because I really want my payment details ported across. Starling did say that a lot of customers had switched away with no issues.
5 - Customer support is a bit disjointed, because Starling really recommend you use the chat functionality on your phone. I don't think this is just age related, it is extremely annoying because often it is busy, and so you have to wait, and stare at your phone while somebody comes to you. And even when they do, they are obviously busy, so a question that might take a minute to answer can take five. I tried emailing them, but the response for emails appears to be 36-48 hours, so that is not much use either.

I have raised a formal complaint with Starling, and they have said they will come back to me within the next 8 weeks.. So I am still stuck with them until this is resolved. I appreciate that there is a lot to dislike about the big banks. However, moving on to a bank that provides mobile phone banking, internet banking, phone banking and counter services just feels like such a luxury after the past few weeks. It has been awful, and I feel that Starling have not been entirely honest about their offering - it doesn't appear to be set up for limited companies.

Maybe Starling is great for some, but it has put me off mobile phone banking as a stand alone solution - there are too many pitfalls that I have encountered.

[Deleted User]

^^ I don't know what they are like to deal with if you have your phone stolen as thankfully that has never happened to me. Most people have old/spare phone lying round, coupled with a 50p PAYG sim from a corner shop, and you can be back on the Starling app in no time.

To be honest it is probably no more difficult than contacting an old dinosaur bank out of hours to report a stolen card.

Also I've never needed to contact customer services in the 2 years I've been a Starling customer, in fact I can't even remember the last time I needed to contact any bank customer services.