Questions about two or more current accounts

evanescent

You appear to be very confused and/or can't be bothered to read the terms and conditions. 

You can open the Virgin Money account without switching your old account to it. You will get the 2.02% interest rate on £1,000 that you deposit into the account (if you want to) and you don't have to transfer any direct debits to the account. You won't get the switching perks aka the case of wine. 

If you want to get the wine case as well, you need to fully switch* your old Nationwide  account to VM and also to meet the other switch criteria. 

Don't trust strangers on an Internet forum. The T&Cs are your friend.

(* full switch = close old account, open new one)

eskbanker

positiveevibes said:

colsten said:

Current accounts exist whether they have some, many or no DDs. Whatever makes you think you would need to close a current account if you remove a DD from it, for whatever reason? 

I am sorry, probably I haven't explained my self well enough. I wanted to know if "switch" means completely closing your old account or just transferring DD would be enough to meet criteria to get the perks (if that is the criteria). But I just found some information that in majority of cases you get the perks only if you switch your account which means you have to close your old one. 

There are various ways of 'switching' - the usual use of the term, especially when dealing with incentives, involves using the Current Account Switching Service, which moves over all direct debits, standing orders, etc, and continues to redirect inbound payments from old to new account, but does entail the old account being closed.

Anyone wishing to retain the old account can't do a CASS switch from it but some institutions still offer a partial switch service, moving DDs, etc, but without closing the old account, and such switches won't qualify for incentives.  It is also possible to switch manually by contacting DD recipients and so on.

For those minded to do so, the system can be gamed by opening temporary 'donor' accounts and using the CASS service to switch these, thereby benefitting from switch incentives while retaining old accounts....

positiveevibes

evanescent said:

You appear to be very confused and/or can't be bothered to read the terms and conditions. 

You can open the Virgin Money account without switching your old account to it. You will get the 2.02% interest rate on £1,000 that you deposit into the account (if you want to) and you don't have to transfer any direct debits to the account. You won't get the switching perks aka the case of wine. 

If you want to get the wine case as well, you need to fully switch* your old Nationwide  account to VM and also to meet the other switch criteria. 

Don't trust strangers on an Internet forum. 

(* full switch = close old account, open new one)

 When I was reading back in October for bank accounts there were no wine perk for Virgin Money and it was not necessary to switch your account to get the 2.02%. So I just wanted to know whether I can still do that, which now I know I can. 

My other questions about switching, Direct Debits, different bank accounts, etc were general as I am not very familiar so I was trying to see the bigger picture.

However, I have just realised when you send me the terms and conditions that I had it all wrong about Virgin Money. As in one of the publications from this website I saw that you get 2.02% interest as "In-Credit Interest" which I thought it means that if you get your salary each month into this account you will earn 2.02% on the first £1000 for each salary. However now when you send me the T&C it says the interest is paid on the balances up to £1000 which I presume means that you get the interest only on the first £1000 and not if you keep putting every month £1000 more. So I presume that is why you said you are using it as a saving. Did I get that right?

colsten

positiveevibes said:

 When I was reading back in October for bank accounts there were no wine perk for Virgin Money and it was not necessary to switch your account to get the 2.02%. So I just wanted to know whether I can still do that, which now I know I can. 

Yes you can. Switching is entirely optional.

positiveevibes said:

However, I have just realised when you send me the terms and conditions that I had it all wrong about Virgin Money. As in one of the publications from this website I saw that you get 2.02% interest as "In-Credit Interest" which I thought it means that if you get your salary each month into this account you will earn 2.02% on the first £1000 for each salary. However now when you send me the T&C it says the interest is paid on the balances up to £1000 which I presume means that you get the interest only on the first £1000 and not if you keep putting every month £1000 more. So I presume that is why you said you are using it as a saving. Did I get that right?

Where in the Virgin terms does it say that the interest is in anyway linked to salary being paid into the account?

You can just put money in once and let it sit there. Regardless of how much you put in, and regardless of where it came from, you currently get 2% (annual) interest, paid monthly, on up to £1,000. For £1,000 in the account each and every day, that's around £1.64 a month, depending on how many days the month has. On any balance above £1,000, you don't earn any interest.

positiveevibes

colsten said:

Where in the Virgin terms does it say that the interest is in anyway linked to salary being paid into the account?

I found the following information in publication at this website but I am not allowed to post link as I just registered my account here yesterday. In that publication it says:

"In-credit interest: 2.02% AER variable on up to £1,000"

I am currently with Nationwide and I have opened that account previously because you earn interest each month on anything you put up to certain amount and every month when I had my salary into the account I got also interest paid from the bank. So that is why when I saw "In-credit interest" in that publication above I thought it is the same as that is what I am looking for pretty much. But it looks like I got it wrong. 

So I can only use Virgin Money as saving for my £1000 and look for another account if I could get any more perks.

Thanks for clarifying. 

kuepper

I've got 6 current a/cs to maximise benefits - to get interest or to access better savings deals/,  when the bonus/gimmick is gone I keep them open to take advantage of any future switch offer

AbundantBudget

positiveevibes said:

colsten said:

Where in the Virgin terms does it say that the interest is in anyway linked to salary being paid into the account?

I found the following information in publication at this website but I am not allowed to post link as I just registered my account here yesterday. In that publication it says:

"In-credit interest: 2.02% AER variable on up to £1,000"

I am currently with Nationwide and I have opened that account previously because you earn interest each month on anything you put up to certain amount and every month when I had my salary into the account I got also interest paid from the bank. So that is why when I saw "In-credit interest" in that publication above I thought it is the same as that is what I am looking for pretty much. But it looks like I got it wrong. 

So I can only use Virgin Money as saving for my £1000 and look for another account if I could get any more perks.

Thanks for clarifying. 

In credit has nothing to do with you salary, it just means the balance on your account  is positive. If today you have £100 the interest will be calculated on £100. If the whole month you have £1000 sitting there, you will get as it was said above ~£1.64 of the interest for that month. If the balance varies you will get less.

funkycredit

I wouldn't worry too much about the amount of accounts you have. I have a purge every so often and literally bin all my card providers & banks and then open new ones. In last 6 months I've opened errrr 😂

Has little effect as I still get great offers and high limits. But that's me until 2022 now. No need for any more. 

mole_man

funkycredit said:

I wouldn't worry too much about the amount of accounts you have. I have a purge every so often and literally bin all my card providers & banks and then open new ones. In last 6 months I've opened errrr 😂

Has little effect as I still get great offers and high limits. But that's me until 2022 now. No need for any more. 

😂😂 Wow! Fair play to you. Just goes to show, you can play the system quite well. Up until last January, I only had 1 current account, I now have 5! 

positiveevibes

funkycredit said:

I wouldn't worry too much about the amount of accounts you have. I have a purge every so often and literally bin all my card providers & banks and then open new ones. In last 6 months I've opened errrr 😂

Has little effect as I still get great offers and high limits. But that's me until 2022 now. No need for any more. 

Alright, so I really shouldn't be worried about having 2 accounts The things is when Ive been checking the T&C for most switches it says you won't be eligible to get the offer if you had an account with some banks in the last 3 years etc. So if you now have so many accounts that means you cannot really get advantage from any other good offers for the same account in that bank for the next years. So that's why I thought for myself would be good just to have 1-2 accounts and once you don't really get benefits from it, just open another ones and close these ones (hope that makes sense).