The HUGE Bonus for Switching OUT of Barclays (or any other bank) - Did you get yours?

money4sb

Around about 3 months ago I needed to call Barclays bank to discuss something but couldn't get through for seemingly ages. I wasn't happy. I thought... What's the point in Barclays any more for me and my wife? 30 odd years of being with them and now we have no local branches so we're reliant on the App and the phone. Not too dissimilar to most of the other banks I know but I was frustrated at the time and decided that 'enough was enough'.
I soon found myself on the MSE website looking for alternative best banks and the bonuses available for switching into them.

Half an hour later and I'd decided that First Direct was a good option since they seemed to have great reviews and were currently paying a bonus out for switching.
That set me on the bonus switch trail for several other banks at the time since as regulars on here know, when one bank starts a Switch offer then others often follow suit too.

I first looked at swapping our Joint Barclays account into Natwest Joint but, as many others might testify, Natwest weren't set up properly to swap Joint accounts. Natwest themselves confirmed this to me when I eventually managed to speak with them and suggested workarounds but I eventually gave up and decided to switch an old sole Halifax account into them to try and get the bonus.

Fast forward now to a couple of weeks later (mid March) and I had several switches in the pipeline for both myself and my wife. Half of these were Switches from newly created 'Burner' accounts into the bonus paying bank accounts.
I went for the full set on offer at the time although I left out TSB due to too many hoops to jump through and the feedback of others about the TSB payout.

Anyway...long story short: I managed to do 11 switches in the end - 6 for me and 5 for my wife. We started off like 'normal' people with 1 bank (Barclays, who we've been with since forever) and now we have about 10 bank accounts (all different banks) with about 5 pounds in between them all.

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife - i.e. £1,200 in total. (6 switches x £200)

Between all the other banks we made a further £900 too.

Grand Total £2,100 for about... hmmm....let's say 5 hours work in total! Not bad I reckon and we'll be well placed for more payouts in a few years when we're re-eligible for new offers.

It's not often that you come out on top when you get p***** off but it really paid off. Ohh... and I also re-opened another Barclays current account too so I'm almost back to where I started but with my DDs and SO's now via First Direct who are quite good in my opinion.

I have no idea how our credit records were affected but it matters not because we'll never be needing to borrow any money so we're not worried.

I'm highly IT savvy having worked in the industry for many years so the creation of accounts from all the various banks via Apps was easy and generally quite quick - although the security checks from each bank are generally quite different and some annoyingly onerous for the uninitiated.

A tip I have for people creating many bank accounts with different banks is to ensure you have your 'Biometrics' enabled on your phone so you can quickly jump from bank to bank and transfer money around easily.  Also, as soon as you get a new account, put a random small amount into it like 17p such that when you subsequently use the account to jump to another later when you switch you can see the 17p appear in the new bank, hence you know that the switch has gone through.

An awful lot of paperwork came through the post for the 11 switches so I advise a spreadsheet if you're going to hit the switches hard. It can get out of hand very quickly if you're not careful. We also have way too many card readers that we don't need either but hey ho.
My advice is to open accounts at both Lloyds and Halifax and have them ready for switches in the future. These 2 banks seem to be the easiest of the 'old fashioned High St' banks to set up accounts with online.
Everyone should get Monza, Starling and Chase accounts set up ready too. These 3 seemingly take 2 minutes to get up and running.

So THANK YOU Barclays for annoying me one day. I'm still with you and you're one of the banks that rarely does switch bonuses but... you made me/us £2,100 !

First Direct, LLoyds, Halifax, RBS, Ulster & Natwest are the contributors to our holiday this year so we're very grateful

If you've never switched bank.... just do it - it's money for free.

Catplan

Chase can’t be used for cass just yet, but the account offers other attractive benefits.

money4sb

Oddly enough, despite Chase initially saying the same about CASS,  we were still able to use them and the switch went through.  

dealyboy

money4sb said:

Around about 3 months ago I needed to call Barclays bank to discuss something but couldn't get through for seemingly ages. I wasn't happy. I thought... What's the point in Barclays any more for me and my wife? 30 odd years of being with them and now we have no local branches so we're reliant on the App and the phone. Not too dissimilar to most of the other banks I know but I was frustrated at the time and decided that 'enough was enough'.
I soon found myself on the MSE website looking for alternative best banks and the bonuses available for switching into them.

Half an hour later and I'd decided that First Direct was a good option since they seemed to have great reviews and were currently paying a bonus out for switching.
That set me on the bonus switch trail for several other banks at the time since as regulars on here know, when one bank starts a Switch offer then others often follow suit too.

I first looked at swapping our Joint Barclays account into Natwest Joint but, as many others might testify, Natwest weren't set up properly to swap Joint accounts. Natwest themselves confirmed this to me when I eventually managed to speak with them and suggested workarounds but I eventually gave up and decided to switch an old sole Halifax account into them to try and get the bonus.

Fast forward now to a couple of weeks later (mid March) and I had several switches in the pipeline for both myself and my wife. Half of these were Switches from newly created 'Burner' accounts into the bonus paying bank accounts.
I went for the full set on offer at the time although I left out TSB due to too many hoops to jump through and the feedback of others about the TSB payout.

Anyway...long story short: I managed to do 11 switches in the end - 6 for me and 5 for my wife. We started off like 'normal' people with 1 bank (Barclays, who we've been with since forever) and now we have about 10 bank accounts (all different banks) with about 5 pounds in between them all.

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife - i.e. £1,200 in total. (6 switches x £200)

Between all the other banks we made a further £900 too.

Grand Total £2,100 for about... hmmm....let's say 5 hours work in total! Not bad I reckon and we'll be well placed for more payouts in a few years when we're re-eligible for new offers.

It's not often that you come out on top when you get p***** off but it really paid off. Ohh... and I also re-opened another Barclays current account too so I'm almost back to where I started but with my DDs and SO's now via First Direct who are quite good in my opinion.

I have no idea how our credit records were affected but it matters not because we'll never be needing to borrow any money so we're not worried.

I'm highly IT savvy having worked in the industry for many years so the creation of accounts from all the various banks via Apps was easy and generally quite quick - although the security checks from each bank are generally quite different and some annoyingly onerous for the uninitiated.

A tip I have for people creating many bank accounts with different banks is to ensure you have your 'Biometrics' enabled on your phone so you can quickly jump from bank to bank and transfer money around easily.  Also, as soon as you get a new account, put a random small amount into it like 17p such that when you subsequently use the account to jump to another later when you switch you can see the 17p appear in the new bank, hence you know that the switch has gone through.

An awful lot of paperwork came through the post for the 11 switches so I advise a spreadsheet if you're going to hit the switches hard. It can get out of hand very quickly if you're not careful. We also have way too many card readers that we don't need either but hey ho.
My advice is to open accounts at both Lloyds and Halifax and have them ready for switches in the future. These 2 banks seem to be the easiest of the 'old fashioned High St' banks to set up accounts with online.
Everyone should get Monza, Starling and Chase accounts set up ready too. These 3 seemingly take 2 minutes to get up and running.

So THANK YOU Barclays for annoying me one day. I'm still with you and you're one of the banks that rarely does switch bonuses but... you made me/us £2,100 !

First Direct, LLoyds, Halifax, RBS, Ulster & Natwest are the contributors to our holiday this year so we're very grateful

If you've never switched bank.... just do it - it's money for free.

Thanks for an interesting read @money4sb (BTW I'm still trying to work out what the 'b' stands for ).

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife - i.e. £1,200 in total. (6 switches x £200)

I'm interested in your comments regarding switching to banks of the NatWest Group, did you in fact switch to joint accounts of the three, both of you getting the incentive? It would be informative for others how you did it.

money4sb

dealyboy said:

money4sb said:

Around about 3 months ago I needed to call Barclays bank to discuss something but couldn't get through for seemingly ages. I wasn't happy. I thought... What's the point in Barclays any more for me and my wife? 30 odd years of being with them and now we have no local branches so we're reliant on the App and the phone. Not too dissimilar to most of the other banks I know but I was frustrated at the time and decided that 'enough was enough'.
I soon found myself on the MSE website looking for alternative best banks and the bonuses available for switching into them.

Half an hour later and I'd decided that First Direct was a good option since they seemed to have great reviews and were currently paying a bonus out for switching.
That set me on the bonus switch trail for several other banks at the time since as regulars on here know, when one bank starts a Switch offer then others often follow suit too.

I first looked at swapping our Joint Barclays account into Natwest Joint but, as many others might testify, Natwest weren't set up properly to swap Joint accounts. Natwest themselves confirmed this to me when I eventually managed to speak with them and suggested workarounds but I eventually gave up and decided to switch an old sole Halifax account into them to try and get the bonus.

Fast forward now to a couple of weeks later (mid March) and I had several switches in the pipeline for both myself and my wife. Half of these were Switches from newly created 'Burner' accounts into the bonus paying bank accounts.
I went for the full set on offer at the time although I left out TSB due to too many hoops to jump through and the feedback of others about the TSB payout.

Anyway...long story short: I managed to do 11 switches in the end - 6 for me and 5 for my wife. We started off like 'normal' people with 1 bank (Barclays, who we've been with since forever) and now we have about 10 bank accounts (all different banks) with about 5 pounds in between them all.

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife - i.e. £1,200 in total. (6 switches x £200)

Between all the other banks we made a further £900 too.

Grand Total £2,100 for about... hmmm....let's say 5 hours work in total! Not bad I reckon and we'll be well placed for more payouts in a few years when we're re-eligible for new offers.

It's not often that you come out on top when you get p***** off but it really paid off. Ohh... and I also re-opened another Barclays current account too so I'm almost back to where I started but with my DDs and SO's now via First Direct who are quite good in my opinion.

I have no idea how our credit records were affected but it matters not because we'll never be needing to borrow any money so we're not worried.

I'm highly IT savvy having worked in the industry for many years so the creation of accounts from all the various banks via Apps was easy and generally quite quick - although the security checks from each bank are generally quite different and some annoyingly onerous for the uninitiated.

A tip I have for people creating many bank accounts with different banks is to ensure you have your 'Biometrics' enabled on your phone so you can quickly jump from bank to bank and transfer money around easily.  Also, as soon as you get a new account, put a random small amount into it like 17p such that when you subsequently use the account to jump to another later when you switch you can see the 17p appear in the new bank, hence you know that the switch has gone through.

An awful lot of paperwork came through the post for the 11 switches so I advise a spreadsheet if you're going to hit the switches hard. It can get out of hand very quickly if you're not careful. We also have way too many card readers that we don't need either but hey ho.
My advice is to open accounts at both Lloyds and Halifax and have them ready for switches in the future. These 2 banks seem to be the easiest of the 'old fashioned High St' banks to set up accounts with online.
Everyone should get Monza, Starling and Chase accounts set up ready too. These 3 seemingly take 2 minutes to get up and running.

So THANK YOU Barclays for annoying me one day. I'm still with you and you're one of the banks that rarely does switch bonuses but... you made me/us £2,100 !

First Direct, LLoyds, Halifax, RBS, Ulster & Natwest are the contributors to our holiday this year so we're very grateful

If you've never switched bank.... just do it - it's money for free.

Thanks for an interesting read @money4sb (BTW I'm still trying to work out what the 'b' stands for ).

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife - i.e. £1,200 in total. (6 switches x £200)

I'm interested in your comments regarding switching to banks of the NatWest Group, did you in fact switch to joint accounts of the three, both of you getting the incentive? It would be informative for others how you did it.

I think the key to getting the bonus for each of the 3 banks is to do the switches all within a few weeks of each other.  I'm guessing that their 'System' only gets updated (synchronised) say once a quarter. Hence the people who leave it too long only get the payout from the first of the bank group that they try.
I did sole account switches for both myself and my wife for each of the 3 banks and all within say 6 weeks of each other.
Some people might give up on the Ulster bank switch when they're asked to name their nearest branch.  I did nothing wrong in saying it was a specific one in Belfast even though I live in the midlands in England.  

dealyboy

@money4sb ... thanks.

Of course there's nothing to prevent each person of a couple switching sole accounts, I also think that there's nothing to prevent a person switching to all three of the banks and receiving three incentives in the Switcher T&Cs ... eligibility restrictions apply to having received a switching incentive from any of the banks prior to 14th Feb 2023.

But your points are well made ... I have a similar story but for me it was Santander I was fed up with. 

Are you keeping your new accounts? Have you taken advantage of their regular savers?

money4sb

dealyboy said:

@money4sb ... thanks.


Are you keeping your new accounts? Have you taken advantage of their regular savers?

To be honest, I've not bothered with any of the Regular Saver thingies since our 'Savings' money is well placed elsewhere for now.

Oh... and every bonus switch I/we received, I quickly transferred out back to our normal banks 'just in case' they changed their minds. See... I trust none of them... Haha.
On one of the switches I did, the donor account was probably open for no more than a day before it was used to jump to another bank.  How marvelously daft is that? 

We now have our 'normal' accounts with both First Direct and Barclays.  We will keep our 'seemingly every other bank' accounts too but they have less than 10 quid in between them.  I'll just log into them now and then and transfer 10p from one to the other such that they never go 'dormant'.

Thanks to everyone on here who has posted about the ease of bank switches btw in the past.  Reading your posts really did set me off on the 'easy money trail'.  

PS.. I now have an almost complete deck of new debit cards too that I keep in the draw (never to be used). 

AmityNeon

money4sb said:

PS.. I now have an almost complete deck of new debit cards too that I keep in the draw (never to be used).

If functionality permits, freeze all debit cards if you don't plan to use them. My NatWest card was never used and locked in a drawer to which no third party ever had access, yet late one night, 20 transaction attempts to the same merchant were made within half an hour (none of which had the correct CVV). Fortunately, the card was also frozen as a matter of principle.

money4sb

AmityNeon said:

money4sb said:

PS.. I now have an almost complete deck of new debit cards too that I keep in the draw (never to be used).

If functionality permits, freeze all debit cards if you don't plan to use them. My NatWest card was never used and locked in a drawer to which no third party ever had access, yet late one night, 20 transaction attempts to the same merchant were made within half an hour (none of which had the correct CVV). Fortunately, the card was also frozen as a matter of principle.

Wise advice, thanks. 

Alex9384

Guys at work laugh at me when I say I have 14 current accounts and I switch from time to time for a bonus.
I laugh at them when they take a full day overtime to earn the same amount of money that I earn for 5 minutes switching banks, while I'm sitting at home drinking coffee.

Alex9384

money4sb said:

Despite Natwest group (Natwest, RBS, Ulster) professing to only pay out 1 switch bonus per person between them, they're so disorganised and seemingly systematically database incompetent that they all paid out each time to both myself and my wife

Does that mean I might be eligible for RBS or Ulster account despite being banned by NatWest? I did an eligibility check for Ulster credit card about a month ago, and indeed was eligible! I'm not eligible for NatWest credit card. I asked their CS about this and they said it may show as eligible but it would later be picked up by the system and my account would be closed. If their systems are not that good at picking up these things, maybe I should try anyway?