[Closed] Changing Bank Accounts, PITA?

I moved from hsbc to smile last year.

all went smoothly with auto DD transfers etc.

just need to get the timing right on tellign employer re: salary - I had one month where I needed to manually transfer salary from old acct to new.

I've just gone through all this-from 4 accounts with 3 banks, to 5 with halifax.
Using their switching process-pain free sooooo far.

Tbh-I was a bit 'scared'as I've so many things in and out, but their advisor assured me all will be well!
You have a several k 'overdraft'whilst the shift takes place too.

DrP

Pain free here as well. Switched HSBC to Halifax. I left enough in my old account to cover anything missed. Closed it a few months later when I was sure nothing else was coming out.

Go for it. No problems as I recall when I did it

Ah cool, didn't dawn on me that existing account would remain open, that would help in case I forget to provide new account details to people who transfer money in, not that there are many unfortunately.

Cheers, all sounds good though.

Peice of cake.

I moved to Halifax and they missed a DD. They refunded me the charges incurred.

Santander, expect loads of problems and requests off them to repeatedly prove who you are, even if youre standing in front of them.

Recentl;y i tried changing acounts with nat west, 4 branches said i couldnt do it there as the staff were not trained, so eventually went to a big branch, saw one lady who made an appointment to see another lady,hard seel about why did i want to cancel my 14,00 quid a month account for a free one, she just couldnt understand i wanted to save 14 quid a month as i didnt use any of its services, and that i didnt have a very expensive phone, or neede car breakdown services, amongst other stuff, and she almost collapsed when i said i never downloaded music, onto something she called an ipod.

Don’t go near Santander – worst service by a mile and a highly questionable business model!

Change to First direct, they do evertthing for you.

Well I've just switched from Smile to Santander.

5% on my current account and £100 Cash back, can't be bad! Mrs also swapped to Santander and got £100 CB to.

So far really impressed, good service, no issues with DD and salary all gone in fine.

wait until you try to get money out............

I don’t want to start a panic or anything but:

A Spanish Bank offering extremely attractive offers to bring in credit balances?

See recent history of Icelandic Banks.

Aren't Smile and Santander the same company? Certainly were when I worked for Abbey.

Moving from Santander as their authorised OD rates are increasing to £1 a day regardless of amount overdrawn.

I take money out most days at cash machines, no issues so far 😆

Smile & Coop are the same, not sure about Santander, certainly didn't think they were!

Managed to get an interest free overdraft as well, whilst I wont use it, it's always nice to know "just in case"

Aren't Smile and Santander the same company?

Abbey is now part of Santander

Smile is the online-only part of the Co-Operative Bank.

Santander bought up Abbey which previously bought up Alliance & Leicester. They also have most of Bradford and Bingley.

Note most of these acquisitions were before the bottom of the market and with the Spanish operation questionable this leaves concern over the operating model!

Smile is part of the Co-op and is sound.

Ah, my mistake.

Abbey did launch an online arm of the company about 10 years ago and thought it was called Smile but must of been something else.

Just came to me, was called Cahoot I think!

Maybe I am the exception. When we moved from Barclays to Abbey National the change over went well except for the fact that they lost 600 GBP which they transferred into someone else's account by accident. Although they did try to say that it was my fault - I soon corrected them mind you. When we moved from Abbey to NatWest - they mislaid a lot more than that it took me 2 days to get up the nerve to tell MrPP. I am now petrified to move accounts again. We got the money back in the end but it is really annoying as you have to let them (the bank) look into it which takes approx 4 - 6 weeks.