Natwest switch bonus conditions question

Super_Whiskey

Existing. So I think that's a no then if the switch has to be completed and the old account closed

NoodleDoodleMan

To get the extra one after a year, you have to pay in £1,500 a month and use the debit card once a month.

Are you sure about the £1500 requirement monthly ?

No mention of that in their switch conditions that I can see - a one off by the looks of it ?

Likewise no such reference in the pdf I was able to download

Snakey

I confused the issue in my first post, because the conditions for the second switch bonus don't say anything about an ongoing £1,500 monthly-pay in so that was me getting it wrong.

It was the use of the debit card, then, that I was interested in. The finish date is definitely June 2020, so clearly "if you're still with us after a year" actually translates to "after fourteen or fifteen months", rather than twelve, if you are an early opener.

What I was wondering was, does that mean fourteen or fifteen monthly debit card payments would be required for those people? Or do the conditions taken together mean that they have decided for simplicity to start everyone's "year", at the beginning of June (after the switch cut-off date) so the first qualifying payment would need to be made in June? Or indeed on some other date, such as 7 July which is the last date on which the final condition for the initial bonus can be met, so the first qualifying payment would need to be made in July? I couldn't find anything to confirm this.

(It would be different for a monthly bonus, such as getting cashback on your bills - it makes sense that something would be measured every month and if you don't meet the conditions for that month then you don't get the bonus for that month.)

NoodleDoodleMan

I checked with NW this morning - the terminology used tends to confuse.

If you switch to their SELECT account for the switch payment it's a one off £1500 - if it's the REWARD account then the £1500 is monthly.

You need to use your debit card once per month right through until next year to get the additional £50 bonus in 2020.

You can use your card in stores for a minimal value purchase, or take cash from an ATM for the minimum amount - one transaction per month.

At least that's what I understood them to clarify.

oldagetraveller

NoodleDoodleMan wrote: »

I checked with NW this morning - the terminology used tends to confuse.

If you switch to their SELECT account for the switch payment it's a one off £1500 - if it's the REWARD account then the £1500 is monthly.

You need to use your debit card once per month right through until next year to get the additional £50 bonus in 2020.

You can use your card in stores for a minimal value purchase, or take cash from an ATM for the minimum amount - one transaction per month.

At least that's what I understood them to clarify.

I've just switched an account to the RBS Select and as you state that, similarly, only requires a one off £1500.
I've changed my Netflix monthly payment to the RBS debit card to fulfill that requirement.
The only thing that I did/do find inconvenient is the need for a card reader, which has to be requested separately and takes about a week to arrive, in order to set up any payees.

Snakey

So your understanding from NW is that everybody whose account was opened in May needed to use their new debit card before the end of May, and if they did not then they will not qualify for the second switch bonus? (And, I suppose, anybody who opened it in April would need to have used theirs for the first time in April?)

I was hoping that they would be starting the clock later than that (i.e. that the first month would be June) - if only to avoid the perception of unfairness towards people who opened their accounts late in the month and so might not have even received their card and PIN through the post by the month end.

Or, at least, that they might have been clearer on that rule so that people would know in advance that if they didn't get their account open early in the month then they might not be physically able to get the second of the two bonuses no matter what they did e.g. so that somebody thinking of opening their account on 29th April could make an informed decision to wait until 1st May rather than being caught by surprise.

I should add that the above isn't the case with me - I'd simply made an assumption that if the deal was that I needed to stay "a year" which was apparently being measured with an end date of "1 June 2020", then they'd be looking for me to make my first payment in June 2019 (rather than rushing out within a couple of days of receiving my card). Sounds like I was wrong!