Plum...Is it just me ?

bigdadda

Eventually got round to setting up a cash ISA as I realised I was going to end up paying a fair bit of tax on one of my savings accounts which was bringing in over £100 a month in interest.

Plum seemed the obvious choice but I just can't believe what a guddle it turned out to be. You have to link a current account etc which is fair enough. Interest supposed to be 5.17% . I transferred £1k just to get it up and running. I then set up another transfer via the plum app but it is showing the transfer will not complete until 15th May (???)  When I went to the Plum dashboard it was showing the money Ok but at only 3%! ! .....I immediately messaged them and had to wait a fair bit for a reply... according to them it was because I was transferring from another cash ISA ...but obviously I wasn't. Queried their reply and was then told it was because the funds hadn't cleared .... well I'm sorry but todays banking system is practically instantaneous as far as transfers are concerned.

I had in fact set up a transfer from Starling for a further fairly large sum and Starling put a temporary hold on it as it was "unusual activity"....thank the gods they had as I was able to cancel the transfer. I have emailed plum a cancelation form as it just seems that there is too much of a delay in transferring funds ... I mean 12 days for a transfer to go through is just ridiculous. Not too surprised that I have yet to receive an acknowledgement. No doubt I will also have to wait an eternity for my cash to be refunded. As I say it might just be my bad experience but I have now opened another cash ISA with another provider. It went as smooth as clockwork and everything shows up as I would expect it to show up.

refluxer

No, it's not just you...

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6522353/plum-feedback-how-can-you-transfer-in-from-plum#latest

clive0510

I was looking at setting up an isa, once april 6th had passed, as I had ready used up my tax free allowance for last year. I looked at the plum, purely because as you say its offering 5.17%. and one or two other high interest ones. but as it turned out none of them were fca affiliated. so in the end decided to steer clear and went for a post office isa. 4.9% fixed for 1  year. after the 1 year I will look again and see whats on offer.

bigdadda

Well I continue to be less than impressed.... I requested my £1K to be returned to my bank account. Dashboard says that would happen yesterday and the "pocket" is now showing £0 but guess what ?.... no money back to my bank account.

I have messaged them again today and as yet no reply .... Perhaps I am spoiled by using the likes of Starling Bank where you get a response in about 5 minutes or less.

ForumUser7

bigdadda said:

Well I continue to be less than impressed.... I requested my £1K to be returned to my bank account. Dashboard says that would happen yesterday and the "pocket" is now showing £0 but guess what ?.... no money back to my bank account.

I have messaged them again today and as yet no reply .... Perhaps I am spoiled by using the likes of Starling Bank where you get a response in about 5 minutes or less.

I know with my 'interest' non-ISA pot with them (but powered by Investec), funds take like 1 W.D. to move from that pot to my main pot for me to then access. I don't know about their ISAs, but if it is a similar system maybe it'll be done on Tuesday due to the BH Weekend.

bigdadda

Well amazingly..... despite the BH ......the £1K was in my account this morning. But my messages over the weekend were largely ignored and I just received what amounted to stock answers with response times of about 6 hours. Today they have at least acknowledged my cancellation form but "We will get back to you again regarding this." ....whatever that means. Obviously I need some documentation from them to show the cancellation as I might need this for HMRC as I have opened the other ISA. The replacement ISA s with ZOPA.... very slightly less interest  (5.08%) but transfers etc almost instantaneous. Sorry Plum but just too convoluted with delays in transfers etc. which these days is really not acceptable.

masonic

bigdadda said:

Well amazingly..... despite the BH ......the £1K was in my account this morning. But my messages over the weekend were largely ignored and I just received what amounted to stock answers with response times of about 6 hours. Today they have at least acknowledged my cancellation form but "We will get back to you again regarding this." ....whatever that means. Obviously I need some documentation from them to show the cancellation as I might need this for HMRC as I have opened the other ISA. The replacement ISA s with ZOPA.... very slightly less interest  (5.08%) but transfers etc almost instantaneous. Sorry Plum but just too convoluted with delays in transfers etc. which these days is really not acceptable.

You won't need any documentation for HMRC. Even if they don't cancel it properly, you are allowed to close an ISA and manually move all of your money to a new ISA once per tax year without losing ISA status on that money.

RunsFromRobots

I tried transferring in an old Stocks & Shares ISA I've held since 2009. It's not a huge amount but it's been up and down the last few years due to COVID and Ukraine, etc. but as it sems to have recovered recently I thought I'd jump ship and move to a Cash ISA for steady interest.

The Stocks & Shares ISA (Elevate) have refused the transfer as they insist on a "wet signature". I can see the email thread between Plum and Elevate has been going on for some weeks with Plum arguing it's against HMRC guidelines.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I wasn't planning on staying with Plum as I have an ISA with Moneybox (which I'm very happy with), but Moneybox doesn't facilitate electronic ISA transfers from EPS (but will with Plum, so using Plum as stepping stone).