No Halifax reward for September?

Ed-1

JustAnotherSaver said:

Ed-1 said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

crumpet_man said:

Did you also get stung with the £3 monthly fee?

Just checked ... nope.

Must be because it was the first month which is fee-free.

First month i've been opted in or first month i've ballsed up?

I wouldn't have thought they'd operate a "we'll let you off this time" policy.

colsten said:

In theory it should still work, as all banks will try SOs for a second time after 14:00-ish if the SO failed through lack of funds in the early hours of the morning. They might even allow the first one through even if it reduces your balance to negative (no overdraft charges would become due if settled before end of the day). The incoming SO should easily be there by 14:00. Having said this, I only schedule outgoing SOs for amounts which I am certain will be in the account on the day at 00:01.

I might test this out with £5 then to see what happens. Sure would save a lot of hassle as the accounts i have to satisfy with this crediting are numerous - i don't just deal with my own.

colsten said:

The Halifax Reward thread is full of information about the options (including at least one that has already been killed by too many people using it). 

I've even been in that thread. It's about 10,000 pages long. Needle and haystack.

Since one of the ways was killed then since it no longer works - what was the workaround out of curiosity?

First month you open/upgrade to Reward is fee-free.

The other option to earn the reward is to make £500 worth of debit card payments in a month. You can do this by paying in to a savings account by debit card. Certain providers allow this. Kent Reliance was one but they pulled the facility.

Note that you have to specify at the start which of the two options you want to do and this can't be changed for a year without downgrading then upgrading the account back to Reward. So opting in to the £5k balance option and then spending £500 on debit card won't get the reward.

PRAISETHESUN

JustAnotherSaver said:

crumpet_man said:

Did you also get stung with the £3 monthly fee?

Just checked ... nope.

PRAISETHESUN said:

If you keep a £5k balance you can automate the pay in by standing order as so: 

Main account --> Halifax £1500 
Halifax --> Main account £1500

Schedule both SOs to pay out on the same day. Since both accounts will have a balance you don't need to worry about about either going overdrawn. Also, it only matters that your balance is £5k+ at the end of the day so if it goes below that whilst the money is being shuffled around then it doesn't matter.

I do this for all accounts that have a monthly pay in requirement. Makes life easier as you don't need to remember to do anything. 

I thought it couldn't dip below £5k at any point so then first question is does the funding need to be done externally or can it be done from a Halifax account?

If Halifax account then that's problem solved - i can just set a £1.5k SO to run through the necessary accounts and back to itself.

Second question is will that work for accounts that don't have £1.5k in? So let's say i run £1.5k from my HSBC to Halifax. I have a SO from Halifax to Lloyds and Lloyds back to HSBC. In reality the SO merry-go-round would actually be way more involved than that but to keep it real simple we'll go for that.

HSBC and Halifax have enough in, but with my Lloyds i only keep in £1 as the account only serves to give me cinema tickets.

So if Lloyds was to trigger first in the day, would it work or would it say sorry no can do?

I know there's a way to do this with the Halifax accounts without leaving £5k in there, or at least there seems to be from comments on here but it's one of those hush-hush we wont help other people kind of secrets because these people think that the banks ONLY react to what is said on MSE and absolutely nothing else.

It works without issue if your account is allowed to go overdrawn - for two of my accounts, they both have a £0 balance and pass the same overdraft money back and forth every month. For other banks, as mentioned by a previous poster, they re-attempt failed SOs around 2-4pm so it sorts itself out by the end of the day as long as one of them is allowed to go overdrawn or has enough money at the start of the day. As long as balances are zero/positive by the end of the day there are no OD fees (or loss of incentive in the case of Halifax).

Personally I find it easier to set up matching pairs rather than trying to go full circle. Less chance of something going wrong. See:

Account 1 --> Account 2
Account 2 --> Account 1

and separately (can be on an different day if available funds are an issue):

Account 1 --> Account 3
Account 3 --> Account 1

rather than:

Account 1 --> Account 2 --> Account 3 --> Account 1

JustAnotherSaver

Yeah i get you. I'd need to check if there's an overdraft on the accounts. I don't think there will be at the moment as i always select £0 when asked.

Just had a look and it seems i can credit Halifax account 2 from Halifax account 1 (internal transfer seems to be ok) which will make it easier.

I just remember when Nationwide brought in their hurdles the credit had to be from an outside source so i'm weary of being caught out.

YorkshireBoy

PRAISETHESUN said:

Personally I find it easier to set up matching pairs rather than trying to go full circle. Less chance of something going wrong. See:

Account 1 --> Account 2
Account 2 --> Account 1

and separately (can be on an different day if available funds are an issue):

Account 1 --> Account 3
Account 3 --> Account 1

rather than:

Account 1 --> Account 2 --> Account 3 --> Account 1

I agree if using separate institutions, but for in-house SOs then if one fails they all fail.
So we used to do BoS 1-2-3-4-5-6-1 and TSB 1-2-3-4-5...........15-16-17-1
And currently do Halifax 1-2-3-4-1 with our £5K balance accounts (our debit card spend Halifax Reward accounts are manually fed on payday).
With the latest Halifax offering we set the in-house SOs up at the outset, and as we knew when the offer was going to end (31st May 2021 in our case) we were also able to put an end date on the SOs, meaning they were 100% automated. All we have to do next year is remove the £20K on 1st June.

JustAnotherSaver

Is it like Nationwide Flexdirect in that once 12 months is up you can't renew then?

YorkshireBoy

JustAnotherSaver said:

Is it like Nationwide Flexdirect in that once 12 months is up you can't renew then?

That's not known yet is it. See the offer T&Cs.
But bearing in mind they developed this product before COVID really struck, and then launched it just before all providers drastically cut interest rates and reward payments, and the current climate looking like it's not going to get better anytime soon, do you really think they'll want to keep paying out an effective 1.5% AER interest rate on £5K per account?

JustAnotherSaver

YorkshireBoy said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

Is it like Nationwide Flexdirect in that once 12 months is up you can't renew then?

That's not known yet is it. See the offer T&Cs.
But bearing in mind they developed this product before COVID really struck, and then launched it just before all providers drastically cut interest rates and reward payments, and the current climate looking like it's not going to get better anytime soon, do you really think they'll want to keep paying out an effective 1.5% AER interest rate on £5K per account?

I just wondered why your deal was ending in May next year.

I forget what month i took this up in. It was either the 1st or 2nd month that it came in to play.

PRAISETHESUN

The current rewards offer run for 12 months, but there's no guarantee that Halifax will choose to offer them again once they expire. I would assume they would, particularly since they haven't withdrawn the account to new customers yet, but you never know... 

colsten

JustAnotherSaver said:

YorkshireBoy said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

Is it like Nationwide Flexdirect in that once 12 months is up you can't renew then?

That's not known yet is it. See the offer T&Cs.
But bearing in mind they developed this product before COVID really struck, and then launched it just before all providers drastically cut interest rates and reward payments, and the current climate looking like it's not going to get better anytime soon, do you really think they'll want to keep paying out an effective 1.5% AER interest rate on £5K per account?

I just wondered why your deal was ending in May next year.

I forget what month i took this up in. It was either the 1st or 2nd month that it came in to play.

It only ends for in May 2021 for those who started it in June 2020.
If you start your Reward account now, the offer runs for you for 12 months from today.

Alex9384

Does anyone know if paying off my Amex CC with my Halifax debit card counts towards £500 monthly spending required for earning rewards?