Alliance and Leicester

vix2000

Thanks. If you think the faster payments implementation will solve the main problem I have it might be worth hanging fire to see what difference it makes to their online banking.

edit - have just trawled their site to email a few questions to them, but can find no email address to contact them!!!!!!!!!

hotmama

I have been a A&L direct cudstomer for a year. I took out a mortgage with them and they reduced my fee by 500 for opening account.

I have had no problems so far... My local branch is a bit of a distance but i find banking at the P.O ok and online is convenient.

Just recommended my OH open one, which did vai quidco. Looking forwrad to 25 pound coming my way!

Overall much better than Halifax, HSBC and that bank they call NATWEST!!

kazzymac_2

I opened a Premier direct account with them over 2 months ago though Quidco and have used the switching service just for my bills. So far so good! I was impressed with the speed in which the cards and information came through. I was unsure at first because of the negative posts I had read so decided to keep my other account anyway and monitor the situation. Transfers between bank accounts do seem to take a bit longer to show but in my situation it doesn't cause too much of an issue. I guess there will always be good and bad feedback with every bank but at the moment I have no real complaints with them.

SuiDreams

I've been a current account customer for 5 years now, thought they were excellent when I first became a customer. Telephone Customer Services were very polite and always told you their name and location, but that seems to have changed now. Plus Interest rates etc aren't as good after the 1st year. Sometimes find it very hard to find information need and Customer Services no longer helpful and find talking to them quite stressful. Plus local branch has now closed.

count_rostov

Wow - I'm impressed that A&L have had som much positive feedback. My fiance and I opened a joint Premier Direct account and linked savings account a year ago and have had no end of trouble. Where should I start...
So, on two occasions they 'lost' cheques we'd banked, for £1700 and I think £1300, both times this resulted in exorbitant bank charges. What REALLY annoyed me was that the sums mysteriously turned up in their holding accounts a few weeks later, so they'd been earning interest on them.
I applied for an ISA and then was sent out details of an account belonging to someone else, with a completely different name and address! They gave me no assurance that my private details hadn't gone out to someone else.
We needed to withdraw £900 from a post office (we live 20 miles from a post office and 90 miles from a branch). The lady I spoke to by phone so eerily competent I thought I'd phoned up the wrong bank, she assured me she had notified the post office and there would be no problem. When my fiance went to the post office of course he was unable to withdraw the cash and the PO had not heard anything from A&L.
Oh, and their telecenter customer service is dreadful, the staff are not properly trained and very rude.
This might not seem like a lot of complaints, but bear in mind this all happened over the course of just 7 months! We've now moved all our accounts to the Royal Bank of Scotland who are brilliant, at least our branch is, and are just keeping the A&L account ticking over while we reclaim the bank charges.
I would NEVER EVER recommend them to anyone.

MarkyMarkD

How exactly did you bank these TWO cheques that got lost, count rostov? Losing one seems like carelessness, but losing two suggests to be that you did something contributory - like not paying them in in a proper way. Please enlighten us! The reason I ask is that I've paid in many dozens of cheques over the years and never had a single one get lost.

Vix2000 You can e-mail A&L via Internet Banking. Once you've logged on, follow this: Help > Contact Us > Other Ways to Contact Us > Send us a secure message.

Surfer

This has got to be the worst Internet Banking website in the world. I have seen better in third world countries. It must be the only bank account that can show you three different balances at the same time and you cannot even view pending paymenst even though you made a payment out fo the account a few minutes previously. I have never come across an account where if your balance is low the day before i,e. before payday, and money is paid in by BACS just after midnight, any withdrawals you make during that day reflect that you have exceeded your limit and have an unauthorised overdraft. As you now have figures with a minus sign and others in credit, it becomes difficult managing your account properly especially if it is a joint account. Every time the other half draws money and makes a purchase she has to up date me in order that I do not also draw one and exceed any limit.
The Internet banking Plus account is so bad that we have decided to switch back to Nationwide where debits, except card payments, are reflected instantly and the account works in real time, not 48 hours behind the rest of the world.
To sum it up, A & L are the pits and their customer service is all scripted!

PROLIANT

Surfer wrote: »

This has got to be the worst Internet Banking website in the world. I have seen better in third world countries. It must be the only bank account that can show you three different balances at the same time and you cannot even view pending paymenst even though you made a payment out fo the account a few minutes previously. I have never come across an account where if your balance is low the day before i,e. before payday, and money is paid in by BACS just after midnight, any withdrawals you make during that day reflect that you have exceeded your limit and have an unauthorised overdraft. As you now have figures with a minus sign and others in credit, it becomes difficult managing your account properly especially if it is a joint account. Every time the other half draws money and makes a purchase she has to up date me in order that I do not also draw one and exceed any limit.
The Internet banking Plus account is so bad that we have decided to switch back to Nationwide where debits, except card payments, are reflected instantly and the account works in real time, not 48 hours behind the rest of the world.
To sum it up, A & L are the pits and their customer service is all scripted!

Like most other banks? I have tried multiple banks over the years and find A&L to be the best for me.

count_rostov

MarkyMark - both cheques were deposited in the post office, one in Somerset and one in the Highlands! Unbelievable, I know.

MarkyMarkD

I don't (or hardly ever) deposit cheques at the Post Office, so I'm not surprised that you say that was the problem. I use branches to deposit and have never had anything go missing.

I would definitely admit that the Post Office deposit system is pants. Effectively all you get is a receipt saying you've given them an envelope; it's not like banking a cheque at a branch at all. So the audit trail is fairly dodgy and I'm less surprised that some go missing.

I normally reckon that the A&L internet banking is pretty poor, but acceptable.

But I paid a large amount off my mortgage in an A&L branch on Tuesday. The cheque cleared through my A&L current account on Wednesday (and dropped off my available balance). But my actual account balance on internet banking still included the cheque amount all the way through today. That really is misleading!

Obviously I knew it was wrong and could adjust for it. But as others have said, this can give you grief if you have a joint account and don't know exactly what your OH is up to.

Fortunately, my OH does nearly all her spending on credit cards, not the debit card, so I control nearly all the transactions on the current account and I can keep things in check.