First Active

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82146036#Comment_82146036

Nor me.

Not a bad business idea though - BouncyCount, we move your money around for you for that extra 0.25%.

How about a product ident of a cute puppy with a bouncing ball…..

Bikeboy

Mine just opened, I applied 4 days short of a month ago. I have previously been a Natwest customer, and I used to work for them.

Has anyone raised a complaint? No amount of moaning on forums or to call centre staff will make any difference. What the bosses care about is formal complaints raised because this affects the banks performance statisitics in the opinion of the FCA. The FCA have access to all complaints formally raised. If you raise a complaint and don't agree to the resolution provided by the bank you can forward it the the regulator with the reference number and they have access to review it. There is no charge to the customer.

If you call the contact centre to raise the complaint they may suggest that you accept a goodwill payment instead of raising a complaint. This is the bank's underhand way of wanting to aviod formal complaints. Call centre staff will never be told this directly, because the regulator would not approve. If call centre staff are reluctant to raise the complaint because they say it won't be upheld you can instist on raising it. Banks are obliged to record all requests to raise a formal complaint, no matter how trivial.

You may ask yourself "what is the point of raising a complaint". The point is that it helps to prevent a race to the bottom scenario, banks are competative and need to cut costs wherever they can. And they willif they think they can get away with it.

flaneurs_lobster

Has anyone raised a complaint?

No.

You're the ex-NatWest employee with all the inside gen.

If you think that a bank being tardy when opening a new account is grounds for complaint then complain away.

Please let us know how it goes.

ToastLady

I didn't raise a complaint either. Didn't think there was much point as they were obviously snowed under. I am a new customer, and wasn't particularly that bothered about the delay as have other accounts just a smidge under the 4.55% rate which was advertised at the time.

Rollinghome

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82146818#Comment_82146818

What would your complaint be? That they offered an account that offered such a good rate that, after details were circulated by Money Saving Expert/MoneySupermarket Group, they were overwhelmed by applications?

I doubt that detering banks offering such attractive rates in future would be popular with most savers. I'd expect that the reputational damage they might suffer following a flood of applicants after appearing in a MSE newsletter will increasingly make most banks etc. very wary of pitching their rates too high.

Bikeboy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82147230#Comment_82147230

Point taken, biting the hands that feeds……….not always a good idea.

zander99

I applied on the 1st September and I am still waiting.

jwhy

My husband and I both applied within a few minutes of each other on 30th August. His application was approved immediately and his account was open and funded the next day. My application was delayed and finally opened yesterday at the advertised 4.55% rate.

First Active did give me a reasonable explanation as why the two applications followed such different timelines. They say it simply comes down to how their system handles names during their standard data checks. When my husband applied, his details went through a fully automated path that cleared instantly without needing human intervention. However, because my name is common, the system detected a routine name match against their database records. Their computer cannot tell people with the same name apart, so it automatically paused my application. They had to have a real person manually look at the file to double-check the details and confirm that those other individuals weren’t me.
 
Because this required a human eye, it had to go into their manual review queue. Unfortunately, as they have received a much higher volume of applications than expected, this is why it has taken so long to reach a reviewer.

While I accept this is a genuine reason for the delay, unfortunately because of the time elapsed I had opened up another provider’s savings account with a similar rate (application completed and approved within 10 minutes), so First Active will no longer be receiving the lion’s share of my savings.

future3

1st Sep - 1st Oct

My acocunt was finally opened.

Unfortunately, the nominated account number (my 1 and only Chase account) was totally different to what I had given them (the sort code was the correct).

You can change it within the account, but I now need to wait another 4 days until its updated so I can deposit funds.

If it was only 1 or 2 digits, I would blame myself, if 6 digits are completely wrong, then I'm pretty suspicious.

Gray001

I also just got mines open today. Ur given how slow they were to actually open it, I am concerned if I start lodging large amounts of cash in and withdrawing in future, it may be delayed because of manual checks.. has anyone any experience of this yet?