A&L, HSBC ."No interest paid in any month you make withdrawal". What does this mean?

gekktel

Judwin wrote: »

The trick is to withdraw all bar £1 from these accounts on the 1st of the month, and then put whatever you dont need into a flexible account. Then on the last day of the month, transfer it all back from the flexible account to the inflexible one. If you keep all the accounts with A&L, transfers will be instant, so you can minimise the time the transfers take, thus avoiding loss of interest.......
Cheers
Judwin

Many thanks for the great advice Judwin. So thats A & L sorted. How about HSBC - any ingenious way of withdrawing a part sum of money from them without losing the entire months interest.

The funny thing is, im sure I read in last weekends 'Mail On Sunday' Financial Section about someone who withdrew just £1000 of their £175,000 from their HSBC account and lost the entire interest for the month. They were understandably !!!!ed off and contacted the Mail On Sunday who contacted HSBC and the entire months interest was re-instated on £174,000. Unfortunately dont have a copy of Mail with me - can anyone else verify this. I wonder what the guiding principle was here?

Mc4ndy

Another thing to be aware of for A+L although in your example it probably doesn't apply

A+L have a £25000 daily transfer limit so if you wanted to empty your account on the 1st of the month and it had more in than this you wouldn't be able to do it all on the same day. You would then have to move it again from your current account to another higher interest paying account somewhere else.

Now I think but I'm not 100% certain (bad memory) that this £25,000 is a total limit, so if you had £50,000 in Direct Saver you could transfer £25000 into premier direct, but not then into Plus Saver on same day. You would have to do this the next day, then start again with the second £25,000 into premier direct, then next day into plus saver.

I've not seen anyone mention this before. All the info suggests that you can just empty the account on the 1st to get round this loss of interest but over 25k it's not true.

It's proved inconvenient for me a few times so I've moved my money into an account that doesn't have these restrictions. Another thing I found out recently is that they won't transfer more than £10,000 out of A+L without phoning you back, which isn't instant, the phone back goes into a queue and is to a number they hold for you on record, again which in certain cirumstances could be inconvenient.

Milarky

A&L, HSBC ."No interest paid in any month you make withdrawal". What does this mean?

a.k.a. Ronseal

Beate

sav4it wrote: »

I really don't like A&L. I just don't understand people that bank longterm with them/switch to them ( not suggesting you do, Beate). I'm just using and abusing.

No offence taken. I got some money for opening A&L accounts and I am also just using A&L to store my money, and I did that at a time when their accounts where one of the highest paying ones. I have now emptied my PlusSaver bar £1 and transferred it to Bradford & Bingley, and I might do the same with the other accounts in a few months. It just p**s me off when banks do not pass on rate increases.

XXXX

I found A&L is a lot worse than HSBC, I merely use my A&L account for their free overdraft for 12 months.

A&L also did not pay Quidco as promised. Rubbish!

intalex

espresso wrote: »

I suggest that you calculate the interest that you are actually getting. You were either misinformed or have misunderstood what you were told. Yes you will get the most up to date interest rate but it is dependant on when the account was opened as stated on their published interest rates webpage.

:rolleyes:

Agreed.... I had to close my "Standard Online Saver" and apply for an "Offer Online Saver" to benefit from the additional 0.5% interest rate.