First 1st Direct £7% account misleading

Rich1976

Not sure why the confusion as on the first page of the Application for a Regular Saver it clearly states that ‘ once your account is opened we’ll take your first transfer straight away. Your regular payment will start one month after the account is opened’.

you then scroll down and input the amount you want to pay  and then confirm you are a uk resident etc. 

thebikemechanic

Call them and ask to open the account with an initial £25 which is the minimum deposit. £300 is the maximum you can pay in. Then ask them to up it to whatever you want from the following month. I've never had an issue getting through to First Direct on the phone and they always make things easy.

On a side note, another poster alluded to the fact that with regular savers you don't earn the headline interest on the full amount at the end of the year as the amount is accruing slowly. Therefore, it's closer to 3.5% on the total amount at the end of the 12 months. First Direct currently have a Bonus Saver account paying 4% AER, with interest paid monthly, on amounts up to £50k. Perhaps an option to consider? (In this account, the high interest rate is paid in calender months where you do not make a withdrawal). However, you can withdraw at any point (interest for that month will then drop to 1.75% and you don't need to set up standing orders to pay in).

ForumUser7

thebikemechanic said:

Call them and ask to open the account with an initial £25 which is the minimum deposit. £300 is the maximum you can pay in. Then ask them to up it to whatever you want from the following month. I've never had an issue getting through to First Direct on the phone and they always make things easy.

On a side note, another poster alluded to the fact that with regular savers you don't earn the headline interest on the full amount at the end of the year as the amount is accruing slowly. Therefore, it's closer to 3.5% on the total amount at the end of the 12 months. First Direct currently have a Bonus Saver account paying 4% AER, with interest paid monthly, on amounts up to £50k. Perhaps an option to consider? (In this account, the high interest rate is paid in calender months where you do not make a withdrawal). However, you can withdraw at any point (interest for that month will then drop to 1.75% and you don't need to set up standing orders to pay in).

OP could drip feed from an easy access such as Tandem at 4.36% if they have lots of funds. That way they get the £300 into the FD per month at the high rate, and the rest at a lower rate in Tandem.

ZeroSum

Rich1976 said:

ZeroSum said:

Albermarle said:

gesdt50 said:

ForumUser7 said:

gesdt50 said:

Good afternoon all, upon applying for the First 1st Direct £7% account, having read the small print as I was going along it said the the 1st payment of £300 will be taken in a months time when I clicked to the next final acceptance page it said that you account will be opened in 3 working days and the 1st payment will then be taken so from 1 page to the next they had made a misleading statement with no back page as the account was then open. What please can be done if anything?

"How do I make payments into my regular saver?

Your first payment will be taken from your 1st Account on the day we open your Regular Saver Account. This will be followed by another 11 monthly payments which can only be made by standing order from your 1st Account (we will set this up for you). "

https://www.firstdirect.com/savings-and-investments/savings/regular-saver-account/

It is clear on the product page this is how it operates, but if you are unhappy I believe you may have a 14 day cooling off period (the HSBC product has this, so FD probably does too as same parent company). Call first direct, and ask to cancel the product penalty free as you are in the cooling off period and see what they say.

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Please read all the other posts on here.

Then read and understand what you are signing up for.

I class myself as uneducated at best and even I worked it out.

7% on £300, then month 2, 7% on £600 and so on.

Every 2 or 3 days these post's start.

Someone having an "off day"? 🤔🤣

I've been in the same boat on forums in the past, giving advice totally irrelevant to the question raised by OP.

🤷‍♂️

I know what I saw it said 1 month on the previous page will be the first taken amount then it was changed on the next page however it was to late to take the screen shot as they had opened the account and there was no back option; guess they are a bad bank also as I have been on the app chat where they tried to get me to go away and then cancelled the chat

First Direct have been consistently named best bank for customer service for many years . So your bad experience is probably a one off. It can happen 

I think that's CS in terms when you get to speak to someone. FD's general systems & service are poor, I've had more issues with them than any other bank. Where FD are good, is that they're more willing to pay you off after complaining

ZeroSum said:

Albermarle said:

gesdt50 said:

ForumUser7 said:

gesdt50 said:

Good afternoon all, upon applying for the First 1st Direct £7% account, having read the small print as I was going along it said the the 1st payment of £300 will be taken in a months time when I clicked to the next final acceptance page it said that you account will be opened in 3 working days and the 1st payment will then be taken so from 1 page to the next they had made a misleading statement with no back page as the account was then open. What please can be done if anything?

"How do I make payments into my regular saver?

Your first payment will be taken from your 1st Account on the day we open your Regular Saver Account. This will be followed by another 11 monthly payments which can only be made by standing order from your 1st Account (we will set this up for you). "

https://www.firstdirect.com/savings-and-investments/savings/regular-saver-account/

It is clear on the product page this is how it operates, but if you are unhappy I believe you may have a 14 day cooling off period (the HSBC product has this, so FD probably does too as same parent company). Call first direct, and ask to cancel the product penalty free as you are in the cooling off period and see what they say.

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

Please read all the other posts on here.

Then read and understand what you are signing up for.

I class myself as uneducated at best and even I worked it out.

7% on £300, then month 2, 7% on £600 and so on.

Every 2 or 3 days these post's start.

Someone having an "off day"? 🤔🤣

I've been in the same boat on forums in the past, giving advice totally irrelevant to the question raised by OP.

🤷‍♂️

I know what I saw it said 1 month on the previous page will be the first taken amount then it was changed on the next page however it was to late to take the screen shot as they had opened the account and there was no back option; guess they are a bad bank also as I have been on the app chat where they tried to get me to go away and then cancelled the chat

First Direct have been consistently named best bank for customer service for many years . So your bad experience is probably a one off. It can happen 

I think that's CS in terms when you get to speak to someone. FD's general systems & service are poor, I've had more issues with them than any other bank. Where FD are good, is that they're more willing to pay you off after complaining

So why do you use them then if they are that bad?

I've got the 7% RS, but apart from that I don't use the current account. The RS account annoys me how slow it is opening & closing. It must be the only one on the market that takes more than a day for it to happen. Its a joke.

Actually I've also got a 0% credit card with them for stoozing (which was 6th choice, having maxed out others) that I nearly had to cancel due to them sending out wrong information (which a complaint netted me £25)