Any experience of Teachers Building Society or Harpenden?

OwnedByACat

I need to transfer my Cash ISA and Teachers Building Society and Harpenden Building Society both have good rates. Can anyone recommend either?

valba_2

I opened an ISA in October at 4.35% interest. Luckily I was checking on my accounts today and it is now 1.6%. I was not notified of this. I will never save with them again.

allegro120

valba_2 said:

I opened an ISA in October at 4.35% interest. Luckily I was checking on my accounts today and it is now 1.6%. I was not notified of this. I will never save with them again.

I assume you are talking about Harpenden, not Teachers BS.  I didn't go for Harpenden's ISA, but was considering it.  IIRC the interest rate will be 1.6%, but if one or less withdrawals are made during the calendar year, the 4.35% rate will be applied on the 31st December.  I hope that explains why it shows 1.6%.  Check on New Year's Eve.

refluxer

valba_2 said:

I opened an ISA in October at 4.35% interest. Luckily I was checking on my accounts today and it is now 1.6%. I was not notified of this. I will never save with them again.

There hasn't been a base rate drop since August and, while rates changes to an easy access ISA are possible at any time, it would be really unusual for it to drop that much for no reason. Their current easy access ISA rates aren't great though, I guess.

Was there a bonus element to the rate that only lasted a few months ?

fuzzzzy

valba_2 said:

I opened an ISA in October at 4.35% interest. Luckily I was checking on my accounts today and it is now 1.6%. I was not notified of this. I will never save with them again.

Was this the single access ISA? Harpenden were paying 4.31% interest on their single access ISA back in October. The rate dropped to 4.21% on 11 november. The rate drops to 1.6% after any more than one withdrawal.

BreakingGlass

I opened a Teachers BS ISA on 9th Dec and applied to transfer in my Paragon ISA. The Paragon ISA closed yesterday and today I received an email from Teachers BS to say that my new ISA is open. I have yet to receive login details but expect these by post. 

allegro120

BreakingGlass said:

I opened a Teachers BS ISA on 9th Dec and applied to transfer in my Paragon ISA. The Paragon ISA closed yesterday and today I received an email from Teachers BS to say that my new ISA is open. I have yet to receive login details but expect these by post. 

Yes, by post, but it didn't take too long.  I received my login details in 4 working days.

BreakingGlass

BreakingGlass said:

I opened a Teachers BS ISA on 9th Dec and applied to transfer in my Paragon ISA. The Paragon ISA closed yesterday and today I received an email from Teachers BS to say that my new ISA is open. I have yet to receive login details but expect these by post. 

It's taken over a month from opening the Teachers BS account online to being fully up and running and able to log-in to see my savings.  I did all my user-actions as soon as possible, hence think that it's just a very slow process based upon snail-mail and manual processing.  The specific timeline was as follows:

9 Dec 25:             Opened a Teachers BS ISA online (4.3%) and applied to transfer in my Paragon ISA that same day using Teachers’ ISA transfer form (downloaded, printed, completed, scanned and emailed). 

10 Dec 25:           Received email acknowledgement of application and was informed that my account was now ready to receive investment

11 Dec 25:           Received email acknowledgement of ISA transfer application.

16 Dec 25:           The Paragon ISA closed.

17 Dec 25:           I received an email from Teachers BS to say that my new ISA is ‘open’ – no account details supplied.

18 Dec 25:           Received email from Teachers to say that the interest rate would drop to 3.95% on 3 Jan 26!

29 Dec 25:           Having heard nothing further, I called Teachers BS to check if all was progressing; they investigated and called back to confirm that my application was on track and still being processed.

5 Jan 26:              Received letter from Teachers confirming account open and receipt of funds on 16 Dec 25, and inviting me to register for online ‘MyAccounts’ service – I did this straight away.

5 Jan 26:              Received email confirmation of Registration for ‘MyAccounts’ service.

6 Jan 26:              Received email to say that ‘MyAccounts’ registration has now been processed and that my User ID and activation key have been sent to my address by post.

13 Jan 26:            Received my User ID and Activation in the post, hence able to log-in and view account.  I was pleased to see online funds being shown from 16 Dec, the same day that my Paragon ISA was closed.

So all in all a very slow process - reminds me of opening accounts by post back in the 1980s!  My wife opened an ISA on the same day (9 Dec) and is still waiting for login details, so the process is not yet over. 

OwnedByACat

BreakingGlass said:

BreakingGlass said:

I opened a Teachers BS ISA on 9th Dec and applied to transfer in my Paragon ISA. The Paragon ISA closed yesterday and today I received an email from Teachers BS to say that my new ISA is open. I have yet to receive login details but expect these by post. 

It's taken over a month from opening the Teachers BS account online to being fully up and running and able to log-in to see my savings.  I did all my user-actions as soon as possible, hence think that it's just a very slow process based upon snail-mail and manual processing.  The specific timeline was as follows:

Wow, that was involved. I dithered and missed the good rates. I think I'll give Teachers a miss in future though