banks with counters

GeoffTF

sheramber said:

But how do you pay your direct debits until the bank are satisfied and release your money. 

What do you do if you needed that large payment to conclude a contract and the bank had frozen the payment and your account.
How do you pay off your credit card to allow you to keep spending while the bank take weeks/months to release your money.
 Compensation after the event doesn’t give you access to your money when you need it.

It is very unlikely that my bank would not pay my direct debits, and it would not have serious consequences for me if those payments were delayed for no fault of my own.

I do not have any contracts to conclude.

The credit limit on my credit card is enough to keep me going for nearly a year. Opening a new account and redirecting my pensions and changing the nominated account for my savings account would take a month or so. A savings account like this one has something to be said for it:

https://www.skipton.co.uk/savings/easy-access/bonus-saver

WillPS

GeoffTF said:

It is very unlikely that my bank would not pay my direct debits, and it would not have serious consequences for me if those payments were delayed for no fault of my own.

That's quite the assumption. If you have an agreement to make a payment in a certain timescale, it's your obligation to make that payment. Difficulties you are having with a different provider do not have any direct effect on your obligation to continue making those payments.

You might expect that your creditors show you forbearance, or that the provider who causes you inconvenience will compensate you, but you might well end up with a messed up credit report as a result.

If you're comfortable with the risk then that's cool - there's certainly no law saying you must protect yourself from account functionality issues/suspension/closure. That doesn't stop it from being poor advice to suggest others should do the same though (not that you have, directly).

GeoffTF

WillPS said:

GeoffTF said:

It is very unlikely that my bank would not pay my direct debits, and it would not have serious consequences for me if those payments were delayed for no fault of my own.

That's quite the assumption. If you have an agreement to make a payment in a certain timescale, it's your obligation to make that payment. Difficulties you are having with a different provider do not have any direct effect on your obligation to continue making those payments.

You might expect that your creditors show you forbearance, or that the provider who causes you inconvenience will compensate you, but you might well end up with a messed up credit report as a result.

If you're comfortable with the risk then that's cool - there's certainly no law saying you must protect yourself from account functionality issues/suspension/closure. That doesn't stop it from being poor advice to suggest others should do the same though (not that you have, directly).

What is the risk here? A major high street bank having an outage lasting over a year and unable to give its customers any access to their money or to honour their direct debits, with the government telling the utilities to cut off supply to any of the bank's customers who did not pay their bill promptly? What is the probability of that happening? It would not be a problem for me if it did. I can pay all my bills by credit card for several months. If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. I could be struck by lightning, but that is so unlikely that I do not worry about it.

sheramber

It is not just an outage.

A search of this site will find those whose banks have frozen thier account because a large payment transferred in triggered some anti fraud  system and it took them weeks to investigate.

In one case it was money to buy a house.

A single mother who hd no money to buy food because her account was frozen.

You may be quite confident that that you won't have a problem. That's fine, that's your choice.

But, just because you donlt consider it necessary does not mean  it is  not useful advice for others to consider  a separate source of money 

Not everybody has a large credit limit on their credit card. 



 If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. 

That is what was advised- having second  account 

Chadsman

I always thought banks closing accounts only ever happened to other people... until two months ago when out of the blue Barclays decided they were going to close my current account around 6 months after it was opened. I never paid in any cash, never bought crypto, the only transactions on the account were two direct debits and various Faster Deposits to or from some other account in my own name usually on the 1st of the month.
As I already had accounts with other banks I was able to shrug my shoulders and move on. If I did not have other current accounts already up and running this would have been a serious headache.
The bottom line is if someone does not want to protect themselves from having a bit of a nuisance turn into a right royal PITA that is a matter for them.

GeoffTF

sheramber said:

If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. 

That is what was advised- having second  account

I thought that you were talking about opening another bank account prior to your main bank account being closed, not afterwards. I can walk into Metro Bank, open an account, walk out of Metro bank with a working debit card, walk into the Skipton, withdraw a cheque, walk back into Metro Bank, pay in the cheque. Up and running. That does not solve all the problems though. You may have money in your main bank account that is frozen. You will almost certainly have a salary and/or pension and/or benefits or other savings accounts paying into that account. It will take time to get those redirected.

WillPS

GeoffTF said:

sheramber said:

If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. 

That is what was advised- having second  account

I thought that you were talking about opening another bank account prior to your main bank account being closed, not afterwards. I can walk into Metro Bank, open an account, walk out of Metro bank with a working debit card, walk into the Skipton, withdraw a cheque, walk back into Metro Bank, pay in the cheque. Up and running. That does not solve all the problems though. You may have money in your main bank account that is frozen. You will almost certainly have a salary and/or pension and/or benefits or other savings accounts paying into that account. It will take time to get those redirected.

You're presuming that Metro will accept an application from you at the point it's needed (which might be tricky if a CIFAS marker has been applied - erroneously or not!) and you'll be near a Metro Bank and/or a Skipton when your main account fails.

Alternatively you could just have one set up and ready.

GeoffTF

WillPS said:

GeoffTF said:

sheramber said:

If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. 

That is what was advised- having second  account

I thought that you were talking about opening another bank account prior to your main bank account being closed, not afterwards. I can walk into Metro Bank, open an account, walk out of Metro bank with a working debit card, walk into the Skipton, withdraw a cheque, walk back into Metro Bank, pay in the cheque. Up and running. That does not solve all the problems though. You may have money in your main bank account that is frozen. You will almost certainly have a salary and/or pension and/or benefits or other savings accounts paying into that account. It will take time to get those redirected.

You're presuming that Metro will accept an application from you at the point it's needed (which might be tricky if a CIFAS marker has been applied - erroneously or not!) and you'll be near a Metro Bank and/or a Skipton when your main account fails.

Alternatively you could just have one set up and ready.

If you get a CIFAS marker, your stand by account is likely to be closed within days, and you will have another bank with which to clear your name. I do not think it is even worth bothering with the Skipton account.

WillPS

GeoffTF said:

WillPS said:

GeoffTF said:

sheramber said:

If I have a savings account that allows branch access, I could be up and running with another bank account in a day. 

That is what was advised- having second  account

I thought that you were talking about opening another bank account prior to your main bank account being closed, not afterwards. I can walk into Metro Bank, open an account, walk out of Metro bank with a working debit card, walk into the Skipton, withdraw a cheque, walk back into Metro Bank, pay in the cheque. Up and running. That does not solve all the problems though. You may have money in your main bank account that is frozen. You will almost certainly have a salary and/or pension and/or benefits or other savings accounts paying into that account. It will take time to get those redirected.

You're presuming that Metro will accept an application from you at the point it's needed (which might be tricky if a CIFAS marker has been applied - erroneously or not!) and you'll be near a Metro Bank and/or a Skipton when your main account fails.

Alternatively you could just have one set up and ready.

If you get a CIFAS marker, your stand by account is likely to be closed within days, and you will have another bank with which to clear your name. I do not think it is even worth bothering with the Skipton account.

You're making yet more assumptions. Sometimes what you describe happens, sometimes it doesn't, depends on precisely which CIFAS marker was applied, which bank(s) were affected and to some extent the whim of whoever manually reviews it. It's a lot more likely to cause problems at application stage. And that's just one aspect of your "just nip to Metro" solution which is flawed.

If you're happy living your life without a backup then go right ahead. It's not a situation I would ever advise anyone to get in to tho.

[Deleted User]

Not all elderly people are averse to new technology. My mother is 84 and quite happily uses online banking, online shopping and the apps on her smartphone phone. With less mobility as she gets older she can still  be in charge of all her financial affairs setting up accounts transfer money and all the rest of it.

She compares prices online when sorting insurances and buying clothes.

She believes the smart shop is excellent, as she can check prices and pack her shopping as she goes along. No longer does she have to unload a trolley and bag it all up again at the till.

I can’t think of the last time she visited the local branch of her bank.

To be honest when I look around me I see plenty of older people using smart technology every day quite happily from shopping to travel through airports.

You really cannot go back in time. Honestly the grass wasn’t greener then. Banks had very restricted opening hours. Now we can do most things whenever we want too.