Think twice before switching to First Direct

phillw

subjecttocontract said:

It's a mad world ain't it ?

It is certainly a different world to the one I grew up in, apps are great & save you a lot of time. Maybe you should take some time to learn about them.

username

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

Brewer21

username said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

What features are missing from the FD mastercards v the Visa cards?
I use mine daily, not noticed anything different when using the card.

subjecttocontract

The previous account I had with them ( a couple of years ago) I seem to remember that the latest cards had lost some of their functionality if you wanted to use them in an HSBC bank machine....e.g. paying in cheques, printing statements etc

Astria

subjecttocontract said:

Yes the guy at FD did ask if I had a mobile phone. I explained that my mobile was quite an old one and that I hadn't seen it for a couple of days, I couldn't remember where I left it and even if I found it I was unlikely to turn it on unless I needed to make a call. I said I have no idea what an App is and as soon as I had told him all this he kinda gave up and agreed to send me a 'securekey'. It's a mad world ain't it ?

They typically send it in 2 parts via 2 delivery mechanisms to prevent it being intercepted too

TrickyDicky101

Brewer21 said:

username said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

What features are missing from the FD mastercards v the Visa cards?
I use mine daily, not noticed anything different when using the card.

I can no longer pay in cash using the deposit machines in my local HSBC so I have to use the counter service.  This would be OK if HSBC hadn't removed the counter service from my local branch!

Daliah

TrickyDicky101 said:

Brewer21 said:

username said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

What features are missing from the FD mastercards v the Visa cards?
I use mine daily, not noticed anything different when using the card.

I can no longer pay in cash using the deposit machines in my local HSBC so I have to use the counter service.  This would be OK if HSBC hadn't removed the counter service from my local branch!

You can use any Post Office to deposit cash into your FD account

subjecttocontract

Astria said:

subjecttocontract said:

Yes the guy at FD did ask if I had a mobile phone. I explained that my mobile was quite an old one and that I hadn't seen it for a couple of days, I couldn't remember where I left it and even if I found it I was unlikely to turn it on unless I needed to make a call. I said I have no idea what an App is and as soon as I had told him all this he kinda gave up and agreed to send me a 'securekey'. It's a mad world ain't it ?

They typically send it in 2 parts via 2 delivery mechanisms to prevent it being intercepted too

I'm not sure what you are referring to......
* If it's the secure key that comes in 2 parts I guess I'd better get my toolbox out if it needs assembling.
* If it's the debit card & pin......card arrived within 7 days, very good........still waiting for pin after 18 days, very poor.
FD has become an acronym in our house for anything slow !

TrickyDicky101

Daliah said:

TrickyDicky101 said:

Brewer21 said:

username said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

What features are missing from the FD mastercards v the Visa cards?
I use mine daily, not noticed anything different when using the card.

I can no longer pay in cash using the deposit machines in my local HSBC so I have to use the counter service.  This would be OK if HSBC hadn't removed the counter service from my local branch!

You can use any Post Office to deposit cash into your FD account

Yes indeed - and that is what I do.  

username

TrickyDicky101 said:

Daliah said:

TrickyDicky101 said:

Brewer21 said:

username said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Had this problem 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.
Its not FD fault, the fraud team is run by the HSBC, Who have outsourced it to India, South Africa etc.
As soon as I have full access to my Esaver at Santander I expect to have the problems again.
Transferring a large amount from Gatehouse to FD to Santander.
All in 2 days due to FD 50k limit per day and fraud check.

FD are a division of HSBC group, and therefore you will always expect some overlap, which was a good thing - until they decided to embark upon the issunce of Debit Mastercards without having the technology in place to support and maintain the existing features (as was provided by the Visa card), such as the HSBC in branch integration results in a poor user experience.

I'm nearly a year in having received this awful rush-designed card and have heard very little communication from FD in terms of how they expect to restore the missing HSBC features. It's like they've forgotten and by maintaining a silence people might forget?!

If we wind the clock back to the early 10s they jettisoned the Maestro cards for Visa, without any loss of facilities, everything worked as it would before.

But this time, the execution has been poor after having been with them for probably close to 15 years it is not something I would expect.

All the moving heaven and earth type service they're famed for is no more, I think you'd be lucky to even get them to move a clod of earth these days.

What features are missing from the FD mastercards v the Visa cards?
I use mine daily, not noticed anything different when using the card.

I can no longer pay in cash using the deposit machines in my local HSBC so I have to use the counter service.  This would be OK if HSBC hadn't removed the counter service from my local branch!

You can use any Post Office to deposit cash into your FD account

Yes indeed - and that is what I do.  

The other posters have pretty much summed it up - lack of account information like statements, unable to use the cash deposit machines- and also it was very handy that if you had an FD credit card you could just pay the balance off at an HSBC ATM, as it was well integrated. It is also the half-arsedness of it all that disappoints me.

As for using the post office - good that it works for you. Who honestly thought it would be a good idea to put any sort of banking in there, when there is often a snaking queue anyway for people wanting to post back the entire asos warehouse?!?!

Part of the problem is that they are mainly not owned by Post Office Ltd and run by subpostmasters. The service I have found is very, very hit and miss as a lot of them around my way are tucked away at the back of a newsagents, whsmith etc.

If I recount my limited experiences with attempting to do anything in the post office other than send letters or parcels, I tried to pay a bill in one of the newsagent type ones (talking a good few years ago), after looking on the post office website, seeing it was open and headed down. The counter had no one behind it and I asked the guy behind the newsagents counter could he jump on and stick this through, and it turns out the only guy that had PO training had left home for the day!

I also had a letter from FD espousing the joys of banking at the post office, so thought it would be a good idea to get rid of some old paper tenners I had sat in a draw and try it out recently. Stood in a queue for 10 mins at a post office only to be told that they didn't accept them and couldn't swap nor deposit them, and to head to the bank.

You wouldn't have had that problem at an HSBC branch, yes they may have given the notes the once over, which is fine, but would have happily deposited it into my account.

As time goes on with lack of communication from FD about the whole 'temporary' loss of facilities, I lose confidence in FD, I think ultimately I will want to get back to HSBC and am just waiting for the carrot for them to dangle.