Birmingham Midshires 2% 1 Year fix

Malchester

And Charter Savings Bank have excellent customer service and a good website unlike Bham Midshire who, in my experience have very poor customer service and slow and cumbersome procedures

Thrugelmir

Ford and Tesco are very efficent. Post Office I would avoid in the future personally.

youngretired

I'm looking at opening 1 of these tomorrow. Can you confirm where it said about taking the money from your linked account via DD (for existing customers), did it give you the option to transfer the funds from within Birmingham Midshire?

I have a Internet Saver account with them and so was going to transfer the funds into that and then internally to speed the process up? I'm not sure if this will work as I know I've read before on forums that people couldn't transfer internally between Internet Savers.

soulsaver

youngretired wrote: »

... people couldn't transfer internally between Internet Savers.

You can by a phone call as long as both linked accounts are the same.

Bobblehat

youngretired wrote: »

I'm looking at opening 1 of these tomorrow. Can you confirm where it said about taking the money from your linked account via DD (for existing customers), did it give you the option to transfer the funds from within Birmingham Midshire?

It was in the email only …. the one that confirmed the account was opened. As I mentioned earlier, the online blurb and the online application text seemed to contradict each other in places as regards to where the funds would be taken as it mentions both cheques and DD's without really explaining in detail.

It is possible that they might require a cheque and a DD to total up to the fund amount if you are a new customer, but that would be a sloppy way of going about things during the application by someone who was actually an existing customer (like me) and had to log in to apply for the account! Surely they could alter the relevant page text to indicate where they would take the funds from depending on whether it was a new or existing customer who was applying.

Nowhere did it offer the option to transfer the funds from another internal account.

I think it was me in another thread that bemoaned the lack of internal transfers between various BM accounts. I'll put up with their quirkiness for as long as they offer products/services I want!

Bobblehat

soulsaver wrote: »

You can by a phone call as long as both linked accounts are the same.

Great! ...... Let's design and offer an online banking service which omits a fundamental function that requires the customer to ring up instead! Brilliant!

Edit: …. or requires you to shuffle money out and in via an external account(s)!

youngretired

I rang them before applying and yes the deposit will be claimed via DD if an existing customer.

When I asked about a transfer within Birmingham Midshire, they said that the initial deposit had to be done by DD and then you could request the balance by internal transfer by phone (until I pointed out that fixed bonds could only have 1 payment received).

It looks like their T&C's are the same for all accounts, but only specific parts relate to certain accounts.

G_M

18cc wrote: »

An alternative is Charter Savings Bank 90 day notice at 1.9%. A bit less interest but you can add to it as and when you want and get at your money in 90 days rather than a year. It's what I opted for at the moment.

95 days ... just to split hairs!

pearl123

Birmingham will do a direct debit if you are an existing customer. It was all very easy to set up.

gt94sss2

Seems like a very slow account opening process if you're not an existing customer.

You have to post them a cheque for your opening deposit but they need to physically write to you first to tell you where to to send it even if you apply online..