Online Banking - Opinions wanted please!

olly300

Lots of banks with fee-paying accounts try and make you take one out as it's an easy way of a bank making money for no effort. However they all have non-fee paying accounts.

Ask them to change your account to non-fee paying one verbally in the branch. Take down the person's name who you spoke to and the time. They normally come out with some rubbish like you have been told, and will refuse to change it.

If they do write a letter to customer services stating what you have been told, sending the letter via recorded delivery and state that you will refer them to the financial ombudsman if you can't change your account as you have been misinformed by their literature stating they have a non-fee paying accounts.

[Deleted User]

Haven't Halifax stopped the free current account? They still have the big sign up about speaking to an advisor today!

The problem with the Halifax online banking is that even though I'm registering with my current account card details I cannot view my DD or SO.

It says something along the lines of you are not registered for this service. When I ring them to register for the service (you cannot email for online issues it seems). They tell me I need to use my current account card to register for them to show. I explain I'm doing this they say there must be an error and re-set up my account and the same problems happen. It's one big circle!

If I was to open a savings account with First Direct the £10 fee would be waived? That's quite good as I have a savings account for Christmas with Halifax so I could swap that over aswell.

How many current accounts can you have?

Could I keep the Halifax one open but not register for online, then open one with either cahoot/smile or First Direct?

Do they do credit searches? If I apply for a few accounts will I look dodgy?

Sorry for all the questions! But thanks for all the great advise, it seems so confusing!

gt94sss2

nicci985 wrote: »

Haven't Halifax stopped the free current account?

No - the free one is still available.. for instance on their website here

There is a list of all the different current accounts they offer here

If I was to open a savings account with First Direct the £10 fee would be waived?

Yes.

How many current accounts can you have?

You can have have several current accounts - I have 4/5 myself.

You can also keep the Halifax one open, but do change to their 'free' option unless you really befit from all the extras you are paying for..

Banks will carry out credit searches if you are a new customer for id purposes - just don't apply for too many at once

Regards
Sunil

Thomas_Crown

siwilks wrote: »

Nationwide has been great... until this month. Now it's an absolute nightmare logging on and their customer service people refuse to recognise the problem. So I would think twice before joining up if I was you. See here for more details.

The Nationwide website was down for around 12 hours & your complaining. It's not like it happens regularly. I've been using Nationwide's site for almost 2 years & I can't remember this happening before. Their customer service is normally very good.

missile

I have current accounts with Nationwide, LTSB, Alliance&Liecester, RBS and Cahoot. IMHO Nationwide is the easiest to use, A&L give best rate for C/A balances up to £2,500.

Ishtar

I bank with Smile and find them very good. Have had no problems with them at all, and have been with them for over 3 years and in my experience the customer service has been excellent. As I have a savings and current account with them, I get a really good interest rate.

Used to bank with Abbey and used their online service, which was very good. I changed bank after 17 years because their standard of customer care became intolerable.

I have a business account with Barclays, which I will be changing as soon as I can. It took them over 2 months to set it up properly....:eek:

HTH
D.

Mikeyorks

nicci985 wrote: »

a) Haven't Halifax stopped the free current account? They still have the big sign up about speaking to an advisor today!

b) The problem with the Halifax online banking is that even though I'm registering with my current account card details I cannot view my DD or SO.

It says something along the lines of you are not registered for this service.

a) No. Their High Interest current account (6.17%) is free.

b) You can't register with the normal data on a 'current account card'?? You need the sort code / account number - or the Roll number, so you're probably going wrong at the outset? From their site :-

Registering for online banking is easy and only takes a few minutes. You'll need:

• Your name and address and details of an account that you have with us such as:
• Roll number or account number and sort code
• Credit card number

siwilks

Thomas_Crown wrote: »

The Nationwide website was down for around 12 hours & your complaining. It's not like it happens regularly. I've been using Nationwide's site for almost 2 years & I can't remember this happening before. Their customer service is normally very good.

If you'd actually read the thread properly you would have seen that it isn't a case of it being down for 12 hours, it is a case of it still not working now and their phone staff refusing to recognise a problem or pass it on to their technical team. I 100% agree that their customer service is normally very good, and my wife and I have used their internet banking for over five years. and it has been brilliant. But on the basis of the service now and their willingness to do something about it, I wouldn't recommend that someone rush to join up at Nationwide. Notice that I never said they definitely shouldn't go with Nationwide, just that they should think twice.

It's been like this since they introduced their new security measures. I'm glad that they put a premium on their site being secure, but good ideas need to be implemented properly, and this seemingly hasn't.

Thomas_Crown

siwilks wrote: »

If you'd actually read the thread properly you would have seen that it isn't a case of it being down for 12 hours, it is a case of it still not working now and their phone staff refusing to recognise a problem or pass it on to their technical team. I 100% agree that their customer service is normally very good, and my wife and I have used their internet banking for over five years. and it has been brilliant. But on the basis of the service now and their willingness to do something about it, I wouldn't recommend that someone rush to join up at Nationwide. Notice that I never said they definitely shouldn't go with Nationwide, just that they should think twice.

It's been like this since they introduced their new security measures. I'm glad that they put a premium on their site being secure, but good ideas need to be implemented properly, and this seemingly hasn't.

I did read this thread properly & the link to the other thread about Nationwide. I immediately went to the Nationwide website & logged on straight away with no problems whatsoever.

I completed the new security questionaire several weeks ago but I have never been asked to answer any of those questions when logging on. You will only be asked one or more of the new security questions if you are setting up a new standing order or bill payment etc.

The only mildly irritating thing is that you only get one go to enter your ''memorable data'' so if you get it wrong your customer number disappears from the screen & you have to find that number & input it manually.

I have just logged onto the Nationwide website whilst in the middle of typing this post & there were no problems whatsoever.

siwilks

Thomas_Crown wrote: »

I immediately went to the Nationwide website & logged on straight away with no problems whatsoever.

I'm very glad for you, however, that it works for some people doesn't mean it works for everybody. Based on that approach to testing software you'd be a perfect candidate for Nationwide's technical department . However if you're someone who can't access their bank account as straightforwardly as you should, as is currently the case with us and others, it's an issue. My point about you reading it properly was that it wasn't a case of it not working for '12 hours' but something more serious.

Nationwide are going to have a serious number of servers handling their internet banking requests. Whether they are allocated by simple load balancing or whether customers are assigned to specific server(s) I don't know. But based on what's going on I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's the latter and some servers' software upgrades have failed and it has been missed.