Alliance and Leicester

Kataratarina

ive been waiting on a&l to switch my acc, finally got a form to fill in my details to authorise them to start switching, but after reading this i dont know if i should go ahead?

i get paid the 3rd last working day of the mth, my dd start to come out on the start of every month, no earlier...

should i be ok?

Surfer

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I do not believe the comment about salary credits not being processed on the correct day. In my experience as a 12-year A&L customer, salary credits are ALWAYS processed before any other transaction and I have never been charged for other payments leaving my account on the day my salary is credited - even though the credit should be there a day earlier according to the Ts & Cs.

Totally disagree on this point. On a number of occasions my salary has been deposited and then money drawn during the day, i.e. cash or Visa card used after checking to make sure that i had sufficient funds. When my statement arrives it shows the cash drawn and Visa payments in the negative, i.e. exceeding my overdraft. Granted I do incur a penalty charge but makes you wonder why the statement reflects that I was in overdraft. My biggest bugbear is when a DD or SO is due the next day and you check the previous evening and it shows that you have insufficient funds because unknown to yourself they have already deducted that money from your account.
I now only use the account for DDs and SOs and not as a daily account as it is one account that is impossible to monitor and everything done of Visa or cash drawn takes a day to update the available balance. At least with Nationwide I always know exactly what my available balance is!

Sp3no

Not sure if i had replied to this thread but its worth saying it twice if i already have.
Alliance and Leicester have only ever been the following
1.Liers
2.Rude
3.Incompetant
4.Rude
5.Liers
6.Did i mention Rude

I am the guy who A&L screwed by setting up phantom standing orders totallying £1299, taking me overdrawn then charging me for the pleasure.

I just had to pay THEM, £1050.19p in charges to get them off my back and i did nothing wrong. They ruined my credit history just as im about to start applying for a mortgage, and the defaults that they have registered on my credit history were made even after many letters asking for them to put my credit matters on hold till after the disagreement. We are still in disagrement!!
Im not a violent man but the sight of any A&L staff makes my blood boil.
STEER WELL CLEAR

masonic

Kataratarina wrote: »

ive been waiting on a&l to switch my acc, finally got a form to fill in my details to authorise them to start switching, but after reading this i dont know if i should go ahead?

i get paid the 3rd last working day of the mth, my dd start to come out on the start of every month, no earlier...

should i be ok?

As long as you are paid at least the day before any direct debits come out there won't be a problem.

masonic

Surfer wrote: »

Totally disagree on this point. On a number of occasions my salary has been deposited and then money drawn during the day, i.e. cash or Visa card used after checking to make sure that i had sufficient funds. When my statement arrives it shows the cash drawn and Visa payments in the negative, i.e. exceeding my overdraft. Granted I do incur a penalty charge but makes you wonder why the statement reflects that I was in overdraft.

The reason for that is that A&L always used to reorder transactions to show all the debits first. As you state, this doesn't have any adverse effects, it's just the way they generate their online statements. Recently they seem to have stopped doing it.

eddy

Dinah93 wrote: »

Afraid I found A & L absolutely appauling and am currently in the process of an ombudsman investigation because of their incompetance. I'm sick of writing about all their mistakes but I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy.

I also had a current account with Alliance & Leicester, and found the account and customer service terrible.

Good for you in taking your case against A&L to the FOS, and good luck for the outcome.

The FOS charge the financial firm £500 per case, regardless of the outcome, so that may make A&L improve their lousy service.

MarkyMarkD

Thank you masonic.

Surfer - you don't totally disagree. You are simply complaining about the order of transactions on your statement - which doesn't matter! As you say, you are not getting charged because the credits ARE recognised first.

Some other banks used to not show intra-day balances - simply totting up the credits and debits each day, showing the overall movement and the day's closing balance. It would be less provocative if all banks took this approach.

FOS do NOT charge for spurious complaints; they will simply bat them back at the complainant.

chico

eddy wrote: »

Dinah93 wrote: »

Afraid I found A & L absolutely appauling and am currently in the process of an ombudsman investigation because of their incompetance. I'm sick of writing about all their mistakes but I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy.

I also had a current account with Alliance & Leicester, and found the account and customer service terrible.

Good for you in taking your case against A&L to the FOS, and good luck for the outcome.

The FOS charge the financial firm £500 per case, regardless of the outcome, so that may make A&L improve their lousy service.

Yep, good luck to Dinah with the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) case, and to the others who can get their case started with the FOS. (I believe the financial firms or FOS are currently able to stall 'normal' bank charge cases pending the result of a test case.)

Eddy - I agree with you, and the other posters, on the poor service from A & L, but don't hold your breath on A & L improving their service. You think the service is bad now, wait until they join with Abbey!

rm84

rm84 wrote: »

I recently had a similar experience which ended up with me being charged £30 for apparently going over my overdraft, because of this. I was beginning to think I was going mad, and had made a big mistake, but this makes me realise that the mistake was probably theirs after all. Having realised this is a fairly common thing, I am going to write to them to challenge it, so wish me luck.

Just an update... I did write to A&L to complain about the £25 charge that was applied to my account, when my available balance indicated that I had sufficient funds to make the payment, but the transactions were subsequently reordered so it appeared that there weren't. I wasn't expecting much to be honest, but when I logged on to internet banking today, I found that the charge had been refunded! :T

So I would definitely encourage anyone with similar problems to stand their ground.

Mrs_Ryan

Good luck to everyone taking their cases re A&L to the FOS - I did and won, A&L backed down very quickly, and they had a right rollocking off the FOS as well!!
But according to A&L, they dont get fined for being investigated.... thats a laugh as well!
But be careful if your account is still with them - after FOS ruled in my favour they threatened to close my account because I went a few pounds overdrawn by accident!! (Part of the judgement was regarding the fact they had put so much untrue information/made so many unauthorised searches on my credit file I was unable to get even a basic account elsewhere so they were well aware if they closed this account I would be left with no banking facilities AT ALL)