Downgrading Santander 123 to 123 Lite

annahi

Can you please tell me how long it takes to downgrade a 123joint to a 123 lite online?  I want to time it carefully.  When I asked Santander they didn't seem to know but said it took about 5 days.  Thanks

soulsaver

5 mins to request it... then subject to CV19 effect so c.5 working days seems a reasonable estimate - was when I recently did it.

badger09

annahi said:

Can you please tell me how long it takes to downgrade a 123joint to a 123 lite online?  I want to time it carefully.  When I asked Santander they didn't seem to know but said it took about 5 days.  Thanks

Mine changed overnight. Same account number & sort code obviously, just name change.

20SmthngSver

It's worth downgrading if you don't have a high credit balance now. If you still have £20k then it's worth keeping, but with their cuts it means you just have to keep more and more up to 20k in it, which is harder for most people now. 

Bastiat

20SmthngSver said:

It's worth downgrading if you don't have a high credit balance now. If you still have £20k then it's worth keeping, but with their cuts it means you just have to keep more and more up to 20k in it, which is harder for most people now. 

As Martin explained, it's not worth keeping even if you do have 20k in it. 1% is much less than inflation and if you have already used your tax free allowance it's even worse. Add to that the £5 fee and the limit on cashback and it's now one of the worst current account out there.

roddydogs

The rate of inflation is immaterial, and its nowhere as clear as martins "dead duck" quote. Most people will need a  c/a balance to pay dds, and 1%  is quite good considering."worst ca out there" no.

Notepad_Phil

roddydogs said:

The rate of inflation is immaterial, and its nowhere as clear as martins "dead duck" quote. Most people will need a  c/a balance to pay dds, and 1%  is quite good considering."worst ca out there" no.

Definitely agree that it's not a dead duck just yet.

We're early retired and don't have a regular monthly income coming in so we're keeping the Santander due to the fact that you get the interest on amounts up to £20k and I have set things up so that our regular savers, direct debits, etc can run automatically for many months at a time provided I've put enough money in it.

I used to manually move money in and out of our various current accounts to get the best interest rates and transfer money across to the myriad of regular savers we have, but this way I can just leave the Santander with a decent amount of money in it and then everything runs smoothly and I don't have to worry about what happens if I'm suddenly out of action (hopefully temporarily).

I might need to revisit things if Santander's interest rate got too much out of whack with the other banks, but I'm happy to lose a bit of interest if it means my life is made easier.

Bastiat

roddydogs said:

The rate of inflation is immaterial, and its nowhere as clear as martins "dead duck" quote. Most people will need a  c/a balance to pay dds, and 1%  is quite good considering."worst ca out there" no.

So your purchasing power is immaterial? Okay...
Since when do you need 20k to pay dds? 1% is much worse than what you can get on savings or even premium bonds which are tax free. Add to that the £5 fee and reduced cashbacks (which you can get with the Lite account anyway) and that duck is not just dead but plucked, butchered and cooked.

Cisco001

It is unlikely you earn back £5 through cash back.

Marcus doing easy access saving for 1.2
NS&I income bond is 1.15

I don't see the point of Santander 123.

colsten

Cisco001 said:

It is unlikely you earn back £5 through cash back.

Many people have consistently earned lots more than £5/mth cashback for years. Many will also earn a lot more than £5/mth under the new rules. But even earning just £5, or more than £1, a month might be worth it.

Cisco001 said

I don't see the point of Santander 123.

You may not have fully understood "Santander 123" and its various permutations. It's all on their website, and has been discussed in detail on MSE. It is possible that none of the 123 variations may be of use to you, but that does not mean none of them are of use for anyone else.