Should I switch business bank from Lloyds to Alliance & Leicester?

whitewing

Help me make up my mind guys..

Income is mainly by standing order, with occasional cheques. Lloyds is based in my home town. All & Leic 10 miles away in a town I visit regularly. Have post office in home town via which I can pay in cheques.

I write the occasional cheque. Mostly outbound transactions are by debit card or electronic transfer.

Personal accts are at Lloyds and not swapping them yet.

I mainly want to move due to very poor service from Lloyds and because I currently pay for business banking (monthly fee and chrge per transaction).

I'm not talking wads of money, just a small growing business with about £2.5K a month coming in.

Help me decide. I'm just worried it'll all get cocked up if I move banks and the standing orders will go awry, and lead to a lot of hassle.

Would need online banking from A & L too

jonesMUFCforever

I would be very worried about A&L - Can you speak to someone face to face if you want to or is it all telephone banking?

What poor service have you suffered.

camstop

Abbey have a good free business account.

It's mostly done online and postal but works well.

exel1966

I'd put A&L in the search box at the top of the page. You'll find quite a few threads about them here and you'll soon be able to draw your own conclusions. The common theme being their distinct lack of customer service.

I would say you'd be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire or put another way better the devil you know !!

gt94sss2

whitewing wrote: »

Income is mainly by standing order, with occasional cheques. Lloyds is based in my home town. All & Leic 10 miles away in a town I visit regularly. Have post office in home town via which I can pay in cheques.

I write the occasional cheque. Mostly outbound transactions are by debit card or electronic transfer.

My father has a similar business profile to you - he was with HSBC where he never had any problems but thought he would give A&L a try.. it was terrible (their online business banking is particularly bad).. and then they changed it from 'free' banking to tyying to charge him a fee each month.

My father went back to HSBC pretty quickly!

He uses HSBC Business Direct which is free as long as you stay within certain limits

Regards
Sunil

whitewing

Thanks for your replies, everyone. I've heard bad things about how long it takes Abbey to get a business bank account up and running properly, which puts me off.

I did do a search on A&L on here but couldn't get much of an impression of what they would be like at running a business acct.

HSBC looks to be a better deal than my Lloyds acct is at the moment. Might have to try that one. I think I'll go into town tomorrow and see who gives the best impression.