First Direct Switch Dilemma

patch9495

Morning All,


I requested a switch on a recently opened nationwide account (already had the 5% on £2500 balance before) to a FD account on 08/03. Whilst I have received my account details/bank cards over the weekend, I havnt received any confirmation from FD that the switch will be going ahead, and as such am apprehensive if I will receive my £125 bonus at all.


Additionally the earliest possible date offered to me to switch using CASS was 04/04, 4 weeks away.

PRAISETHESUN

patch9495 wrote: »

Morning All,


I requested a switch on a recently opened nationwide account (already had the 5% on £2500 balance before) to a FD account on 08/03. Whilst I have received my account details/bank cards over the weekend, I havnt received any confirmation from FD that the switch will be going ahead, and as such am apprehensive if I will receive my £125 bonus at all.


Additionally the earliest possible date offered to me to switch using CASS was 04/04, 4 weeks away.

From memory the first confirmation I got from FD when I did my switch was when I called them up to set up my online banking - they went through a script and one of the things they confirmed was my pending switch. I can't recall if I ever got a letter/email from them about it before it occurred, although I definitely got a letter when it was completed. Depending on your bank, they should also write to you as well to confirm that they have received a switch request so it might be worth trying to contact them as well perhaps?

I think that as long as you applied before the cut off date you should be good - unless the T&Cs specifically stated that your switch needed to complete before a certain date to be eligible. At any rate, you should still be eligible for the standard £100 offer so I wouldn't worry too much.

mac.d

Do First Direct definitely require certified ID and proof of address (I assume this is because you can't pop into a branch with your ID)?

PRAISETHESUN

mac.d wrote: »

Do First Direct definitely require certified ID and proof of address (I assume this is because you can't pop into a branch with your ID)?

If they are unable to identify you electronically then yes, they will require you to provide them with ID documents. This will be required to be certified as they don't have any branches to show your original documents in.

You *might* be able to get away with popping into a HSBC branch and getting them to forward it on to FD (I did something similar for a BoS account in a Halifax branch) but I haven't heard of this being possible so I suspect you probably won't be able to do this.