M&S current account

colsten

eschaton wrote: »

I want to close the cards as they are using up £7400 of available credit. I took out a 6th credit card last week and the limit was only £2600 so this will help get a decent limit on the next card.

You can ask for your existing credit limit to be reduced.

colsten

chriswright wrote: »

My wife and I are about to each apply to open one of these.

As long as at least one of you also has an account with a different financial institution, and if you don't need Branch access, there's no reason for not going for the M&S accounts. Having all your money with a single bank could leave you stranded for an extended period if something goes wrong with them.

eschaton

colsten wrote: »

You can ask for your existing credit limit to be reduced.

That's what I'll be doing when I close them - reducing them to zero.

What good are credit cards that charge interest?

ValiantSon

eschaton wrote: »

I want to close the cards as they are using up £7400 of available credit. I took out a 6th credit card last week and the limit was only £2600 so this will help get a decent limit on the next card.

I'm not prying into your affairs, but do you really need that much available credit?

eschaton wrote: »

That's what I'll be doing when I close them - reducing them to zero.

What good are credit cards that charge interest?

You only pay interest if you don't clear your balance each month. If you aren't clearing your balance then there may come a time when you run out of 0% balance transfer deals.

eschaton

ValiantSon wrote: »

I'm not prying into your affairs, but do you really need that much available credit?



You only pay interest if you don't clear your balance each month. If you aren't clearing your balance then there may come a time when you run out of 0% balance transfer deals.

Since fees increased from the maximum £35 (IIRC) for balance or money transfers, I've never done a BT.

I've only paid £0.17 in interest on credit cards during the past 15 years, and that was only last month because I paid off the Tesco CC at the weekend and the payment didn't go through until 2 days or so later.

At the end of the day, credit card balances earn interest in a savings account so the higher available credit the better. Not much these days but better than nothing.

YorkshireBoy

eschaton wrote: »

Since fees increased from the maximum £35 (IIRC) for balance or money transfers, I've never done a BT.

Crikey you must be going back a bit with your £35 figure?


But there are plenty of fee-free BT cards available (and have been for a year or two)...7 or 8 at the moment I believe.

eschaton

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Crikey you must be going back a bit with your £35 figure?


But there are plenty of fee-free BT cards available (and have been for a year or two)...7 or 8 at the moment I believe.

Probably about 15 years

I might have a look at fee-free BT cards as my Barclaycard is up in May.

System

colsten wrote: »

As long as at least one of you also has an account with a different financial institution, and if you don't need Branch access, there's no reason for not going for the M&S accounts. Having all your money with a single bank could leave you stranded for an extended period if something goes wrong with them.

They have their own late/ weekend opening branches in many M&S stores and you can do basic transactions at HSBC branches too.

Branch access is therefore a selling point.

Muttleythefrog

Shockingly slow.
Applied online for account 12/08/2018. Finally able to create online account and use my account on 17/09/2018 and thus instruct switch. Switch will complete 01/09/2018.

I did everything as soon as I could.. returned documents same day.. activated card same day received... applied for switch as soon as I could and for earliest date possible...and was a routine account opening... no overdraft wanted.. no manual ID verification required. Normally I would expect these things to be done in around 2 weeks... it took 7. They describe it as "New fashioned banking" but I am unsure what century they're talking about. It even took a 15 minute phone call to activate a card... very pleasant and polite I would add... but it all feels a bit Miss Marple. Every single step has been more difficult and slower compared to other accounts I've opened. Need to use a device every time I want to log in on my PC... and there's so much security information to set up. I decided that I would switch away from Natwest during the switch process... and I'll probably be doing same with M&S once I get my reward for switching.

colsten

Muttleythefrog wrote: »

Need to use a device every time I want to log in on my PC...

You can mitigate this to some extent by using the app, which has Touch ID login so is easy to use once you have set it up. You'd still need to keep the hideous gadget and all your security info in a safe place somewhere, for use in emergencies.

Don't forget M&S do a nice Regular Saver for their current account customers so it might be worth keeping the account. I also got some extra offers - a credit card bonus was amongst the more useful ones. Not sure whether they are still doing those though.