I’m straight up front, I’m doing it entirely for the switch bonus.
I find it incredibly funny that they consider me ineligible for their £250 overdraft facility When they do the CASS and carry over the money I have currently sat in my RBS account, they’ll see I’m more than financially viable. But then I couldn’t care less about an overdraft facility anyway and I’m glad they’ve rejected me on that score because it makes zero difference to me personally. The one thing about FD that is truly making me smile, is how they’re pushing their 1 percent interest on a savings account, save £300 a month for 12 months for a measly £19 interest, yeah, no thanks!
It could be that once in there with FD, because they are app only, I’ll stick with them. I’ve proved to myself over the last decade I have no requirement whatsoever for branch banking.
As for Chase, I know what I just recently said in the Chase thread, but now I’m seriously looking at when/if they introduce direct debits, I’ll manually swap over the two active d/d’s from my Starling account to Chase and then if Nationwide are still offering their own account holders to CASS into a new account for £125 or whatever, I might just bin Chase on a CASS, assuming of course they join the CASS scheme, and take the free money from Nationwide.
Well as one can seemingly no longer acquire the services of a NHS dentist, unless of course you’re prepared to go on a 2 year waiting list, I felt I had no option. I am already on the books of a NHS dentist, it’s just that it’s 245 miles away from where I now live! Even the return journey plus the standard consultation fee would be more than the £71 half hour fee my new private dentist charged me as a new customer. So, if I can recoup the cost of the filling via a switch bonus, then I’ve levelled things up slightly. It does not however cover the cost of my hygenist appointment in April, which is going to cost £128 for an hour in the chair. To be fair though, I’ve not had a proper hygenist deep clean in over a decade, possibly longer, so I’ll suck it up. It’s all going on my M&S credit card anyway, so it’s not like I’m paying any interest.
Yeah, it’s horses for courses really. I’ve been with RBS for 2.5 years and as much as I do prefer their app over say Chase at the moment, I hardly ever used the RBS app for anything. I never really used the account except to have my wages paid in, essentially, it’s a pointless account for me other than its clear usefullness as a CASS’ing account. It could be that in 2 years time, I dump FD for another switching bonus. By then, if Lloyds are offering an incentive, as I won’t have held a current account with them for at least 3/4 years, I should be eligible for any incentives. I’ve now made around £500 out of switching bonuses, it’s free money at the end of the day. And just to add, it’s made negligible difference to my credit scoring. So many people swap accounts these days, that whole load of tripe about not maintaining a steady relationship with one bank, is a bit of a pathetic excuse for downgrading someone’s score. I just can’t let stuff like that worry me.
Exactly the same for me. I don’t mind the app & prefer it to others such as Santander or Lloyds but my day to day requirement from a high st banking app/interface is very small. No frills is fine & I’ll take the switch money. It’s just a back up.
So, less than 48 hours after applying for a First Direct account, my welcome pack and debit card have arrived, which I think is about the quickest turnaround I’ve ever had on opening a brand new account.
And because I just wanted to check the actual weight of the alleged 1kg of paperwork, it actually came to 185 grammes
I still can’t use the account yet because I have to wait for my telephone password in order to register for online banking and to be able to use the mobile app. I can probably add funds to the account immediately because I obviously have an account and sort code. I’m guessing the telephone password will arrive tomorrow.
With any luck, they’ll have started the process to CASS my RBS account.
Initial required funds to qualify for switch bonus transferred to FD. Obviously I can’t see the account at the moment, but when I set up the payment from RBS, the Confirmation of Payee confirmed a HSBC account in my name.
To be fair, that looks like all there is, slightly more than I had with my RBS account when I opened that. Then again, Nationwide are buggers for sending out lots of paperwork for various things and I’m paperless with them.
The debit card isn’t too bad. I now have 4 debit cards, Nationwide, Chase, Starling and FD, one silver, one teal, one blue and one black, so I can hardly mix them up!
That’s very impressive, and a credit to First Direct.
Can’t you now call them to activate telephone banking yourself, I remember setting my own telephone password and I don’t think I ever got sent a paper “temporary” one first?
Indeed, I probably could phone them for a telephone banking password but I absolutely completely hate talking to banks just as much as I can’t stand going into a branch, hence why aside from Nationwide, my other 3 accounts have no branches, unless of course we want to be picky and say I could use a HSBC branch for FD, but that is about as likely as me becoming a trillionaire.
The welcome letter does say a telephone banking password is on its way, that’s good enough for me, I can wait, it’s not like I’m going to be using the FD account as an everyday current account.
I had a slightly different letter and had to call them to activate my account instead. Perhaps they’ve changed their processes to make getting set up easier?
It seems judging by the doom and gloom of earlier re paperwork etc, that they may well have changed their processes. After all, who wants all the hassle of multiple interactions with a bank when applying for a new account? The whole point about attracting new customers, is to make the process as simple as possible. As long as one is fully registered on the Electoral Roll and can be checked and verified through the leading credit reference agencies, then as my own case proves, it should be quick and easy.
On the subject of credit reference agencies, I had a notification yesterday from ClearScore that a hard search had been done against my name and indeed on checking, it confirms HSBC have done a hard search on me. Chase didn’t and neither did Starling, so why HSBC feel the need to do a hard search for a bog standard current account, only they can answer, but I guess it’s all to do with money laundering checks etc.
Nobody, clearly - although to be fair to them it was only one, albeit lengthy, interaction required.
I’d rather that the several piecemeal steps which I have experienced with other banks. Take TSB as an example. I tried adding my card to Apple Pay on my MacBook Pro. No option to activate other than to call them. I did call them and struggled to get through to the right department despite calling the dedicated Apple Pay phone line. I questioned why I couldn’t have just got a text code as I did when activating the service on my iPhone. They said that the system apparently only allows one device to be activated at a time, so if a customer wants to use multiple devices they have to call to activate to “make sure it’s them”. It gets worse! They then took all my details and discovered I didn’t have a telephone banking passcode. Not surprising, as I don’t ever use telephone banking if I can help it (like you). I did actually have one long ago, but it seemed the system had not migrated it over to Sabadell’s platform and now didn’t recognise it. So they made me reset my passcode. The new passcode arrived in a text, which I then couldn’t use for 10 days “for security”. I had to call back after the 10 days were up, give a couple of characters of the passcode, and then finally they manually activated my card!
So, eventually, it was accomplished in a roundabout fashion using something that was texted to me anyway (the very thing that was apparently too insecure earlier in the process). Their anti-fraud technique seemed to be to make everything so difficult even a fraudster wouldn’t bother, so by the time the customer got to the end of the process you could be sure they were genuine. And that’s leaving out all the details of the call centre runaround I got every time I called (again, on a dedicated Apple Pay activation line)!
I tell you what would be nice, is if HSBC allowed cross pollination between their different platforms. I would find it extremely useful to be able to tie in my M&S credit card for example into my FD account, but I guess that’s just asking far too much!
Irrespective, I will as I said in a previous post, pay my M&S credit card out of my FD current account just to show some willing In any case, my wages will be getting paid into FD, well they had better be because obviously that should be taken care of once the switch is done, but I’ll still check with my employer to see if I need to manually update my own change of banking details. This was something my Government pension provider reminded me of in a conversation, that although the CASS process should take care of just redirecting payments to a new bank, they sometimes don’t bother telling the organisation of where the funds originate from in the first place.
For money laundering checks I see soft searches done on me. Barclays carried out one on me for the Apple financing loan, no hard search appeared. Lloyds/Halifax/Metro/Nationwide/FD/TSB all carried out hard searches a basic current account.
RBS and Natwest both carried out hard searches on me, gave me sort code and account numbers, then closed the accounts in 24 hours claiming they can not offer me one. Asked to remove their search and they refused
Now that is weird! If they had any issues at all with you, then you should never have even gotten the bank account and sort code. Banks however, are a total law unto themselves, shrouded in secrecy upheld by those that benefit most.
When they do the CASS and carry over the money I have currently sat in my RBS account, they’ll see I’m more than financially viable. But then I couldn’t care less about an overdraft facility anyway and I’m glad they’ve rejected me on that score because it makes zero difference to me personally. The one thing about FD that is truly making me smile, is how they’re pushing their 1 percent interest on a savings account, save £300 a month for 12 months for a measly £19 interest, yeah, no thanks!
In any case, my wages will be getting paid into FD, well they had better be because obviously that should be taken care of once the switch is done, but I’ll still check with my employer to see if I need to manually update my own change of banking details. This was something my Government pension provider reminded me of in a conversation, that although the CASS process should take care of just redirecting payments to a new bank, they sometimes don’t bother telling the organisation of where the funds originate from in the first place.