Co-op £150 Switch & Stay Offer 27/9/24

Petriix

Saverssave said:

It’s making all the transactions that are a problem for me, is there a way to get around that since Amazon is now a minimum of £5? 

Trading212 let you pay in £1 by debit card. You can set it as a daily recurring payment. There's a cumulative £2000 limit before you start paying fees. They're also doing a referral scheme at the moment. 

HillStreetBlues

I believe PayPal lets you sent 1p to someone via a debit card.

Petriix

I have to say this is probably the 'clunkiest' account opening I've encountered in recent times. The only way to activate the debit card is via the telephone. When I tried on Thursday the wait time was over an hour so I gave up. 

I also applied for the 7% regular saver. After a couple of days I got confirmation that my application was successful but the account isn't showing in the app yet so I can't fund it. 

Finally, when I applied, I used a specific email address. However, all correspondence has been sent to the old email address associated with my existing Smile account. Very strange. 

Free money is free money though! 

Emily_Joy

Do I get it right that in order to benefit from this offer you need a smartphone, that supports Google Pay/Apple Pay/Samsung Pay?

boingy

I was also surprised to see that "activating" the debit card for online use requires a phone call, and when you call the given number you just end up in the normal customer services queue, which in my case was 35 minutes (the initial estimate of the queuing time was 3 minutes!).

I'd expected an automated system to set-up the card but, no, you have to speak to a real person and the person I got didn't seem to know what I was talking about, even after I read her the text on the large white label that was stuck to the front of my debit card. She then asked me to answer one of my memorable questions but asked me one I have never set-up. Then she tried to text me a magic number but it didn't arrive. But it was OK, she was able to bypass all that by asking me to read some stuff off the debit card! I pointed out that it was not an ideal new customer experience but she didn't seem to care. 

Anyhow, yeah, what a rubbish bank. Good job I'm not planning to keep the account.

Oh, and to add to the comedy the label didn't peel off cleanly so my debit card has sticky residue in places.  

HillStreetBlues

boingy said:

I was also surprised to see that "activating" the debit card for online use requires a phone call, and when you call the given number you just end up in the normal customer services queue, which in my case was 35 minutes (the initial estimate of the queuing time was 3 minutes!).

I'd expected an automated system to set-up the card but, no, you have to speak to a real person and the person I got didn't seem to know what I was talking about, even after I read her the text on the large white label that was stuck to the front of my debit card. She then asked me to answer one of my memorable questions but asked me one I have never set-up. Then she tried to text me a magic number but it didn't arrive. But it was OK, she was able to bypass all that by asking me to read some stuff off the debit card! I pointed out that it was not an ideal new customer experience but she didn't seem to care. 

Anyhow, yeah, what a rubbish bank. Good job I'm not planning to keep the account.

Oh, and to add to the comedy the label didn't peel off cleanly so my debit card has sticky residue in places.  

Even their statements haven't had a refresh in 20 years!

orange-juice

Emily_Joy said:

Do I get it right that in order to benefit from this offer you need a smartphone, that supports Google Pay/Apple Pay/Samsung Pay?

If you have a Google account, you should be able to add a card via https://wallet.google.com/. I would have thought that that would satisfy that particular condition, but I can’t guarantee it.

dealyboy

orange-juice said:

Emily_Joy said:

Do I get it right that in order to benefit from this offer you need a smartphone, that supports Google Pay/Apple Pay/Samsung Pay?

If you have a Google account, you should be able to add a card via https://wallet.google.com/. I would have thought that that would satisfy that particular condition, but I can’t guarantee it.

@Emily_Joy ... indeed it is a condition to add the card to a digital wallet, by whatever method. When you do it you will need to enter a pin sent to the account's registered e-mail or phone and then you will get a 'congratulations' e-mail or text from Co-op Bank.

Customer Service have advised me that we do not need to use Google Pay or any digital payment to receive the incentive.

Topscooby

Co Op standard account now opened and online/mobile banking fully setup. Debit card received along with the PIN number. Switch ( from TSB ) confirmed with being actioned from the 17th October with a completion date given as the 25th October. I’ve also opened a Regular Saver account, with 7% interest, and deposited the maximum monthly allowance of £250 and will continue to do so for the remaining eleven months.

So far, all well and good but did also have a twenty five minute wait on the phone just to set up my debit card for online spending…what a time consuming and archaic system that is! Also, part of the account opening process advises you that the account will be run paperless…which is exactly how I want it. However, to date, I have received no less than six letters through the post!

So, that should bag me the £75 joining bonus…now to double check the hoops I need to jump through for the remaining £75 on offer.

Andy

Petriix

Well, my switch from Chase went through yesterday (confirmed by text message from Chase) so I jumped through the hoops today. First I transferred in £1000 from my savings then went about topping up my daughter's lunch money balance by debit card, £1 at a time to make the 10 requisite transactions. The first two went through OK but the third failed stating that I needed to contact my bank to setup the Verified by Visa code... 20 minutes on hold later I was able to set a password and, as the app wasn't working, I asked to transfer £900 back to my savings... cue 10 minutes of interrogation about the payment which I was simply returning to where it came from minutes before.

With that done I was able to make 3 more lunch money payments before the payment provider rejected the 6th attempt; I suspect I'd triggered their own limit. So, five £1 payments into my Trading212 account completed the 10. Meanwhile the £900 wasn't showing in my savings. A couple of hours later I got a text about "fraud concerns" and was able to reply YES to send the payment - apparently the inquisition on the phone earlier wasn't sufficient. Finally it went through about 3 hours after I initially sent it.

At around 4pm I got a confirmation email that my switch was "complete", despite it clearly having been completed yesterday. Now alarm bells are ringing that I may have been premature in doing all of the above due to the stipulation in the T&Cs that "Deposits and transactions made prior to the day after your switch completes will not count towards fulfilment of this criteria". It really depends on how you interpret the word "completes". I guess I'll know within the next week because they say you get the £75 within 7 days of meeting the criteria.

This is absolutely the most long-winded and tedious switching bonus I've gone for.