Wanting to move from HSBC Premier to Barclays Premier and they aren't interested

ratechaser

ratechaser 

If it's packaged add-ons that you want, there are good but less 'pseudo-private banking' accounts out there, e.g. Nationwide, Santander...

Dahl - Well yes of course... true private banking customers are unlikely to need baubles like priority pass lounge access as a paid extra for their account (in very general terms, PP lounges are inferior to true airline lounges anyway...).

Still, 500k gets you Jade at HSBC, if you lack the 5m for 'proper' private banking...

randompenitent

I signed up for Barclays Premier a couple of years ago without issues and with no requirement to be a customer for months in advance. I didn't even visit a Barclays branch.
Decent mobile app and website, but I ended up closing the account at the start of this year because I'm not convinced there's value to me in having a "relationship manager".  I'd get a call once every few months offering assistance and clearly looking to sell other products but definitely not a hard sell. The trouble is that it isn't clear what the banks have to offer beyond bank accounts. They sell other firm's insurance with their own brand tacked on, investment and share dealing services which are available at lower cost elsewhere and a variety of other products like credit cards which typically don't require me to be a customer anyway.
If there's something that's part of the package that you feel is worth it - preferential rates on loans, for example - then fine. 
For what it's worth, I switched to Starling which does all I want. No chequebook and no branches but neither of those are a problem for me.

ratechaser

randompenitent said:

I signed up for Barclays Premier a couple of years ago without issues and with no requirement to be a customer for months in advance. I didn't even visit a Barclays branch.
Decent mobile app and website, but I ended up closing the account at the start of this year because I'm not convinced there's value to me in having a "relationship manager".  I'd get a call once every few months offering assistance and clearly looking to sell other products but definitely not a hard sell. The trouble is that it isn't clear what the banks have to offer beyond bank accounts. They sell other firm's insurance with their own brand tacked on, investment and share dealing services which are available at lower cost elsewhere and a variety of other products like credit cards which typically don't require me to be a customer anyway.
If there's something that's part of the package that you feel is worth it - preferential rates on loans, for example - then fine. 
For what it's worth, I switched to Starling which does all I want. No chequebook and no branches but neither of those are a problem for me.

As I previously mentioned, the 'relationship manager' can be useful on rare occasions where something goes wrong. I remember once that NatWest's IT had a wobble and no inbound payments were processed on one day, and it took over a week to get sorted. Not great given it was my pay day - but one call to my RM and they authorised a large interest free overdraft equal to what I'd normally get paid, just to ensure no issues with outbound payments. Meanwhile if the media were to be believed, most standard account holders couldn't get through on the phone, ended up with rejected payments, unauthorised overdrafts etc and had to sort out the mess themselves.

As I said, I'm not a high maintenance customer, but good service when needed can be very valuable. Especially when you can have the account for free. 

Dr_Crypto

I’m a Barclays Premier customer. I haven’t needed any assistance from them so can’t make any comments on it. They send me messages every so often saying they’re there if I need them.
Funnily enough I went from a student account to Premier (I went back to Uni, certainly didn’t earn enough after finishing undergrad).