has anyone used FD's easyswitch feature?

pamelab21

I am taking out a fixed rate mortgage with FD and was going to move all my banking over to take full advantage of the offset feature,
they over an 'easyswitch' which basically means they will take control of switching all standing orders and direct debits to save me having to do this.
I am unsure whether to trust this or not.
Has anyone else done this successfully with First Direct?

Thanks

simongregson

I am in the middle of doing this at the moment. They seem to be doing OK so far, but it takes them about a month. Standing orders have transferred in a few days, they are working on the direct debits...

They do seem to be rather more competent than my previous bank. Just check on the supposed transfer date and keep a float of cash in your old account for a month or two to cover any problems transferring direct debits.

MartynwithaY

I've done this and had some problems, but I think it was probably my old bank's (HSBC) mistake more than FD.

Basically, all my DDs where meant to be transfered to my new FD 1st account on the 3rd of this month, but nothing went out on the day. My mortgage and a few other payments went out of my old account that day and then where refunded the next day and then taken out from the FD account.

All this meant that I went over my overdraft limit with FD, and a got a call from them. I explained what had happened and I wasn't charged anything and everything seems to be ok now. But keeping enough cash in both accounts is probably a very good idea.

Madvic_2

I used the switching process last month, 2 ( MBNA and Littlewoods) out of 15 DD's went wrong.

I switched from Alliance and Liecester to FD

You have to be very careful of the dates.
What happened to me was...

MBNA can't change a DD a set number of days before it's due out (can't remember how many) - That's fine (I thought) as i had plenty of money in A/L to cover all DD's as FD suggest you do.
However when FD notifed A/L to transfer the DD's all the DD's on A/L were cancelled. I haven't got to the bottom wether FD requested that they were cancelled or A/L decided to without instruction. Each blames each other!

Therefore MBNA can't change to FD in time, attempt to take from A/L which has already been cancelled. I get a returned DD charge from MBNA and 0% removed.(Have got charge removed and 0% reinstated)
Exactly the same thing happened with Littlewoods catalog.

So the thing to remember is keeping cash in both accounts may not prevent problems.

If I were to switch banks again I would make all my min payments to Credit Card companys manually as well as waiting for the DD to go through. (Obviously this is not always possible if you have large min payments or lack of cash flow)

Other than that, FD have been great. So nice to speak to a human, especially one that can actually remember conversations you had days ago.

pamelab21

In the end I decided to do it myself. All our dd's are set to around 10th of the month so they have all just passed. Called all the companies last night and this morning and have cancelled them all with my bank myself too (as the companies confirmed I could do) hopefully things will run smoothly

Fingers crossed.