Slow Alliance and Leicester

richardg_2

In the summer 2007 I finally plucked up courage to leave HSBC whom I had been with for 11 years and had no complaints with apart from their very annoying insistance on using overseas call centres, and I joined Alliance and Leicester Premier Direct. I chose this account following recommendations on this site and because their call centres are all in the UK! However, I am getting very annoyed with the speed at which they work and am wondering if it is just me or it is an A+L thing. I have noticed that they can take days to move money from one of my accounts to another A+L account. Also, their summary page showing your current balance and available funds almost never tallies! For example I could have £100 in the account and the A+L £250 overdraft facility so the available funds should be £350 but they will be something ridiculous like £200. It will sit like this for days until something happens (a payment comes out to explain the difference). Why are A+L so slow?!? I never had this with HSBC!
If it stays like this I will definitely be leaving A+L. If anyone can recommend a good web based bank account which works at a more real time speed like HSBC but also has UK only call centres and pays a decent interest I would be very greatful!! Or is this the Holy Grail!!:rotfl:

Thank you
Richard

Dickieburd

Royal Bank Of Scotland have a call centre in Edinburgh and they work in real time as well, as for interest you would have to look at their website for rates. However, they have just introduced these card readers for performing certain internet transactions which is a bit off putting but it seems that quite a few other banks have introduced them as well.
The A+L also have a strange way of numbering their accounts, ie. they use the last digit from the sort code and that is the first digit of the account number which they go by 9 digits. Also my wife tried to find out the sort code and account number of her Easysaver account to trasfer funds into from RBS but A+L said it was 72-58-10 then 8x0's or 8x9's then a reference number which is ridiculous. She is going to close that account and she has since opened a savings account with RBS which has a normal 6 digit sort code and a normal 8 digit account number.
We have a joint A+L current account but are only keeping it open for the Visa debit facility as a backup to our RBS Solo/Maestro, but the A+L current account will probably get the push sometime in 2008.

richardg_2

Thanks for the quick reply and for letting me know it is not just me that is frustrated with a+l services! I will check out RBS. Do you know if I am obliged to stay with A+L for a minimum term before I can leave them?

Thanks
Richard

masonic

You can leave them whenever you like. When I closed my account recently because of their new overdraft charges, once I had set up my new account I found all it took was a 3 minute phonecall (using their 0800 number from https://www.saynoto0870.com, of course).

richardg_2

thanks masonic. that is good news! im strating to look around now for alternative accounts. if i find a good one (good internet service, good interest rate, UK call centres) i will post here

SalsaDanca

When I wanted to close my A&L account, they ignored my phone calls and didn't close it until I wrote to them. There's a £5 per month charge if you don't fund the account, so make sure that you get confirmation that the account has been closed.

skybluesaver

I was with A+L for just over a year. I found there customer services was excellent but chose to close the account after finding updates took so long to show online, sometimes as long as 72 hours. I was also annoyed by the new overdraft charging structure.

gt94sss2

richardg wrote: »

If anyone can recommend a good web based bank account which works at a more real time speed like HSBC but also has UK only call centres and pays a decent interest I would be very greatful!!

Have you considered First Direct? Its owned by HSBC so you can continue to use their branches and its call centres are all in the UK.

They don't pay interest on their current account but have an associated e-savings account with pays 5.5% and you can transfer funds between the two accounts immediately.

Regards
Sunil

Mikeyorks

The amount you pay monthly into an account has a real bearing .. you don't mention it?
The Halifax high interest current account is quite good at 6.17% AER - but needs £1k monthly. Online functionality / speed is good - and transactions between their accounts are real time. They also run systems 7 days a week - so DDs due out on Mon ... are not reserved on a Fri night.

Call centres - try not to use them, and mainly succeed as their online is good. But they seem to mainly be English .... with just a few Scots thrown in to balance the equation;)

richardg_2

thank you all for your help. I will check out both First Direct (but isnt it quite a labour intensive way of banking switching money into savings to get interest than back to pay DD's when they are due??) and also Halifax, which sounds a bit too good to be true! By the way I pay in around 3000 a month so I think I have most of the high street bank market available??

gt94sss2

richardg wrote: »

thank you all for your help. I will check out both First Direct (but isnt it quite a labour intensive way of banking switching money into savings to get interest than back to pay DD's when they are due??) and also Halifax, which sounds a bit too good to be true!

In general with current accounts, I find you either need to look for good/decent customer service or higher interest rates - not both at the same time.. and of the two I would personally go for customer service as how much money does one normally have (on average) in a current account?

In my view if the amount is that high that you would really benefit from having a higher interest rate - you should be moving your money to a savings account much earlier.

Most of the 'higher interest' accounts do have various catches - Halifax, for instance limit their higher interest rate to the first £2,500 and pay 0.1% AER/gross p.a. for anything over this amount and if you don't credit your account with over £1,000 two months in a row, you need to credit it with £1,000 for another 3 months before the higher interest rate kicks in again..

Apart from HSBC/First Direct, Nationwide and Smile also seem to have decent customer service (and pay interest too) - I would also mention Cahoot but I think their CS standards have slipped somewhat..

Regards
Sunil