Skipton Building Society - Albania

savethepandas

Recently I was on holiday in the Balkans.

I have three Halifax current accounts, so pay £500 from each into Skipton to get the £5.

Whilst in Albania, I was unable to log into the Skipton app, (comes up with unable to connect to internet). Nor could I access the Skipton website. My partner had the same problem with both app and website.

I logged into the Family Building Society and transferred the money there. So no real hardship for me.

As soon as we crossed into North Macedonia, both worked, crossed back to Albania and neither worked. We were touring round, so tried in multiple places in Albania.

A heads up if you are travelling to Albania and are more reliant on Skipton than I am.

Frequentlyhere

Yes there's a few place/bank combos which zone out. MSE forums themselves went rather dodgy for me in Turkey recently. 

You can generally use a VPN (e.g. NordVPN, Windscribe) to both 'pretend' you're in the UK wherever you are and also secure your traffic if you're on a public wi-fi.

Rudyson

Idle speculation: I wonder if Skipton won't accept access from Albania, or whether Albania won't let you access Skipton.

retiredbanker1

If I have to make payments manually to anybody whilst away I set them up on my banking app and future date them. 
This might be worth thinking about for the future?

clairec666

Just curious, what's the £5 you're getting from Skipton? Some kind of bonus thing?

Middle_of_the_Road

clairec666 said:

Just curious, what's the £5 you're getting from Skipton? Some kind of bonus thing?

The £5 is from Halifax reward account for spending £500 with the credit card.

clairec666

Middle_of_the_Road said:

clairec666 said:

Just curious, what's the £5 you're getting from Skipton? Some kind of bonus thing?

The £5 is from Halifax reward account for spending £500 with the credit card.

Ah, thanks

PRAISETHESUN

Middle_of_the_Road said:

clairec666 said:

Just curious, what's the £5 you're getting from Skipton? Some kind of bonus thing?

The £5 is from Halifax reward account for spending £500 with the credit card.

Just FYI, Skipton is one of the BSs who have written to customers in the past who frequently pay in by debit card then immediately withdraw the money. Might be worth having a backup option in case.

Rudyson said:

Idle speculation: I wonder if Skipton won't accept access from Albania, or whether Albania won't let you access Skipton.

This is my wonder as well!

poolboy

You could try changing time on phone, one app barred me out in spain as it detected I was 1 hour ahead.  

DirtyConcrete

Skipton could be using a web application firewall to protect their servers, which can be configured to block connections from IP addresses in certain countries 

surreysaver

Middle_of_the_Road said:

clairec666 said:

Just curious, what's the £5 you're getting from Skipton? Some kind of bonus thing?

The £5 is from Halifax reward account for spending £500 with the credit card.

Debit card, not the credit card!