Halifax Reward Account changing to £3 charge with “lifestyle rewards”

NaomiBryden

I just received this letter too... so for me this means I automatically cannot switch to a better performing bank account and shall indeed loose the very small interest I currently make.... because I’m going on maternity leave. Is it just me or is that a little outrageous? For decades I have paid in and kept a good current account with my bank, why should I have to loose this perk because of statutory maternity pay? I feel like there should be a work around for this...

colsten

Steve_xx said:

I just checked Birmingham Midshires, but cannot see any method of making a debit card payment into those accounts.
Possibly PayPal might be of use, as already stated. But, does anyone know if PayPal levy any charge for shunting money in and/or out?

Some providers offer different deposit methods for different accounts. In the case of BM, some people may have old accounts which can be fed by Debit Cards. Just in the same way as some other providers offer deposits by DD on old accounts.

Steve_xx

NaomiBryden said:

I just received this letter too... so for me this means I automatically cannot switch to a better performing bank account and shall indeed loose the very small interest I currently make.... because I’m going on maternity leave. Is it just me or is that a little outrageous? For decades I have paid in and kept a good current account with my bank, why should I have to loose this perk because of statutory maternity pay? I feel like there should be a work around for this...

I think you are maybe regarding the £1500 monthly funding as having to come from earnings? It doesn't. You can simply move smaller amounts in and out until it totals £1500 in any given month. The difficult bit is the debit card payments.

colsten

NaomiBryden said:

I just received this letter too... so for me this means I automatically cannot switch to a better performing bank account and shall indeed loose the very small interest I currently make.... because I’m going on maternity leave. Is it just me or is that a little outrageous? For decades I have paid in and kept a good current account with my bank, why should I have to loose this perk because of statutory maternity pay? I feel like there should be a work around for this...

How does this change mean you cannot switch to a "better performing bank account"? How do you define one of those? Why did you settle for £2/mth when you could have got £4/mth, or even £10/mth elsewhere (pregnant or not pregnant)? What makes you think a bank is obliged to pay you any perk at all? Why do you think you will be losing interest from the Halifax Reward accounts (as they have never paid any interest)? Why do you think Halifax are making this change because you will get statutory maternity pay? 

I can assure you, there is nothing outrageous about this forthcoming change to your Halifax account. If you want to, you can make over 100% more from your Halifax account than before. If you don't want to get more, they'll stop paying you any perks, and they won't be charging you anything, either. Nor are they preventing you from switching your account to a different bank. The choice is all yours.

NB. If your name is actually Naomi Bryden, please change your MSE user name, or set up a new account. Never, ever, reveal your real name on a public forum on the internet. 

colsten

Steve_xx said:

The difficult bit is the debit card payments.

It may be too much effort for some, but difficult it is definitively not.

Wheres_My_Cashback

Many assumptions being made that a debit card payment to another account will suffice to fulfil the requirement, only time will tell when it's tried.
I would take what the CSA has advised with a very big pinch of salt until proven, not that I would blame the CSA if wrong as they're not trained to know such intricacies of systems.

colsten

Wheres_My_Cashback said:

Many assumptions being made that a debit card payment to another account will suffice to fulfil the requirement, only time will tell when it's tried.
I would take what the CSA has advised with a very big pinch of salt until proven, not that I would blame the CSA if wrong as they're not trained to know such intricacies of systems.

Who is/are the CSA, and what have they said?

Steve_xx

colsten said:

Wheres_My_Cashback said:

Many assumptions being made that a debit card payment to another account will suffice to fulfil the requirement, only time will tell when it's tried.
I would take what the CSA has advised with a very big pinch of salt until proven, not that I would blame the CSA if wrong as they're not trained to know such intricacies of systems.

Who is/are the CSA, and what have they said?

Customer Service Agent -somenody posted earlier that CSA had told them that as long as it's a debit card payment, it can be to a bank.

pphillips

Not bad, getting 1% cashback on £500 of debit card spending.
However, I don't understand why Halifax deduct tax when almost everyone gets an personal savings allowance of either £500 or £1000 each tax year.
Regarding debit card payments to savings accounts, I wonder if these can be set up to take recurring payments each month.
By just keeping the £5000 in the current account, I doubt that this will make customers eligible for the Halifax savers prize draw.

ZeroSum

pphillips said:

Not bad, getting 1% cashback on £500 of debit card spending.
However, I don't understand why Halifax deduct tax when almost everyone gets an personal savings allowance of either £500 or £1000 each tax year.
Also regarding debit card payments to savings accounts, I wonder if these can be set up to take recurring payments each month.

Cos its a reward & not interest or cashback

If you take co-ops everyday rewards, they split it in 2. The £4 is a reward (paid as £5 net of tax) then the £1.50 is cashback so not taxable as its 5p per debit card transaction.