Sainsbury's Bank - payments out taking four days

philadam

I'm just wondering if anyone else has had experience of their payments out of Sainsbury's Bank to another account at their own high street bank taking four working days to arrive (eg debited on the 25th March arriving at my bank on the 28th) when using the internet banking for their Internet Saver account? I've been moving quite a bit of money around over the past week or ten days and all the payments (ranging from £4000 to £50,000) seem to be taking four working days to arrive in spite of the 3 day cycle the website tells me. In addition, an aggravation I have had is that once I have set up doing a payment on a given day and it pops up that security checks will be done (in most cases within two hours I think it said) before being debited, it wouldn't let me do any other payments that day until outstanding payments had been checked. I initiated an instruction the other day at 10am and couldn't send any more money out for the whole day.

It's something I'll check with Sainsbury's and see what they say, but I wanted to hear if anyone else has had the same issue and that I'm not missing something.

Thanks for any input.

Phil

FridaysVictim

I believe it takes 4 days with Sainsbury's Bank as they aren't a "Clearing" bank .
Sainsbury's have to effectively ask a bank to do the transfer hence the 1 day delay . Building societies are the same I believe .

philadam

Hi FridaysVictim. I did check that one out beforehand as I wanted to be sure of my facts and this is from the Sainsbury's Bank FAQs:


"When will the beneficiary receive the payment?

If you are making a payment to a Non Sainsbury's Bank savings account including payments to Sainsbury's Bank Credit cards the payment will take up to 3 full working days to reach the account."

In addition I checked previous payments from my Nationwide eSavings account to my bank and that has always been 3 working days. It makes me think that somewhere along the line someone is holding onto the money for a day longer than they should be.

Phil

merlinthehappypig

Transfers from Sainsburys Internet saver to my Nationwide Flex account have always taken 2 working days ie. instruct Monday, arrives Wednesday.

earlgrey_3

philadam wrote: »

It's something I'll check with Sainsbury's and see what they say, but I wanted to hear if anyone else has had the same issue and that I'm not missing something.l

Yep, I did a transfer for an ISA of £4k from Northern Rock to Natwest last week followed by an identical transfer from Sainsbury's 15 minutes later for my wife's ISA.

NR took normal 3 days but Sainsbury's took 4 days. Could have caused a problem but I was able to cover it by delaying another payment. Hasn't happened before. I understand Sainsbury's Bank is a joint operation with HBOS so hope it was just an admin glitch rather than anything else.

philadam

earlgrey wrote: »

Yep, I did a transfer for an ISA of £4k from Northern Rock to Natwest last week followed by an identical transfer from Sainsbury's 15 minutes later for my wife's ISA.

NR took normal 3 days but Sainsbury's took 4 days. Could have caused a problem but I was able to cover it by delaying another payment. Hasn't happened before. I understand Sainsbury's Bank is a joint operation with HBOS so hope it was just an admin glitch rather than anything else.

earlgrey, thanks for the feedback. I did the self same thing with a £4k ISA last week although it wasn't a problem for me either as there were enough funds in my bank anyway. However, I have a couple of larger transfers I am waiting to go through, one of which should have gone in today that hasn't and it had me checking. I now expect the last transfer to go in on Monday and hope this doesn't create an issue of funds being available.

The more I ponder on it the more I think the delay is due to the security checks that Sainsbury's do, but that should not affect the 3 day cycle and as a customer if the debit date is xx/xx/xx then that is the date the funds should go into the banking system. I will check with Sainsbury's and see what they say and post it here.

Phil

YorkshireBoy

Phil,

I've made many transfers out of Sainsbury's to various accounts and they've always taken 4 days, ie action Monday, arrive Thursday, so it's interesting that you've found they say it'll only take 3 days on their website...unless "3 full working days" implies they don't count the day of initiation?

KiKi

I have made transfers out on Monday, and they've arrived on Thursday. I do call that '3 full days'.

If I make the payment on Monday, 1 full day later is Tuesday, 2 full days is Weds and 3 full days is Thursday. So I'd expect a payment on Monday at 2pm to reach its destination by 2pm on Thursday.

I've never had a Sainsburys payment go through any faster than that!

KiKi

philadam

Day 1 (eg Monday) - Sending account is debited
Day 2 (eg Tuesday) - Being processed in the BACS system
Day 3 (eg Wednesday) - Receiving account is credited

That's what the 3 day banking cycle is as I understand it (experienced from working in a bank for many years). If you send money on a Monday and it arrives on a Thursday then that is 4 working days as one of the days in the cycle is the day the transfer was made.

Something seems amiss to me..

Phil

YorkshireBoy

Phil,

This issue with HBoS (and therefore loosely Sainsbury's with their 50/50 BoS status) and A&L has been discussed before on the boards.

'Spur of the moment' requests to transfer money seem to result in 4 day (I'm with you ) transfers, whereas 'future dated' transfers with the same providers seem to be carried out in the more usual 3 days.

Since you cannot make a 'future dated' request with a Sainsbury's Internet Saver account, they're always (at least until May anyway ) going to take 4 days.

BTW, and so you know there's someone worse off than yourself, YBS transfers out take 5 days (something to do with the NatWest collection account used I believe?).

philadam

Hi YorkshireBoy. I must admit I was unaware of the HBOS thing and that probably explains it with Sainsbury's 50% stake. My concern is that their website specifically says 3 full working days and I checked this before the transfers were done only to discover it's actually 4. I find this misleading and still think someone is hanging on to it for a day longer than they need to. I've done an email to them asking them to explain it to me and we'll see what they come back with. Roll on same day crediting!:cool:

As for YBS taking five days, that's what you get for banking in God's Own County. It takes a couple of days for Him to OK it;) A proud man from Yorkshire myself.

Phil