Bank Accounts.....a bit lost?

[MrPeters]

Hello.

I currently bank with Natwest / Abbey / Alliance and Leicester.

I have my personal finances with Natwest, in the form of a current account and cash ISA; the account from which my direct debits go out with Abbey; and my business affairs with A&L.

For the most part, the Abbey and A&L accounts work well. My only reservation is that Abbey don't offer faster payments, where as A&L do (despite both being under the Santander umbrella?).

Natwest is where my problems lie. They fail to process anything correctly. Their on-line banking is horrible to use, and half the time the card reader authentication-y thing doesn't work when trying to authorise new payees.

I live out in the sticks and need to go to the bank (for personal accounts) maybe a couple of times a week to pay in cash. My nearest Natwest branch is now a 35 mile round trip away, where as I can bank with A&L at the post office - about 100 yards away.

I'm not convinced about moving my personal banking to A&L - aren't they merging properly with Santander sometime soon? So this leaves me looking at alternatives. The 'winner' so far seems to be Lloyds TSB - they offer decent accounts and I can bank at the post office. (Does anyone know how long it takes to pay cash in to a Lloyds acct via the PO? - A&L is instant).

Does anyone have any views / suggestions?

My needs are; No overdraft facility, Post Office banking, instantly see changes to my account via on-line banking, staff who can action requests in a timely and accurate fashion.

Many Thanks,

Mr Peters.

[onomatopoeia]

MrPeters said:

My needs are; No overdraft facility, Post Office banking, instantly see changes to my account via on-line banking, staff who can action requests in a timely and accurate fashion.

I'm with Lloyds for my personal account. If I pay in cheques / cash they appear online immediately, or at least within the five minutes it takes me to walk back to the office. I have an overdraft facility which I never use and I have never used the post office to pay things in.

Regarding "staff who can action things" I shall recount my experience this week, when I had my first problem with the account in the 20 years I have held it. On Wednesday I paid in a cheque which was sufficiently large that they could not process it immediately as they had to contact the account holder it was drawn on for additional checks. They weren't able to do so that day. When I looked at my online banking the following morning, instead of showing a balance of £x+y with £x usable (where x was the existing balance and y was the cheque amount) it showed a balance of £x+y with £0 useable, although they had honoured the direct debits that went out on that morning, it being the first of the month.

I turned up at the branch when they opened (10am on a Wednesday for some reason) and they found someone to look into it straight away. After agreeing that there was a mistake and fighting with the computer for 10 minutes which refused to allow her to put my cleared balance to the correct amount (£x) she had to go find the person making enquires on the cheque and they had to come in and sort it out. Which they did, apparently it was related to them not being able to contact the solicitors the same day and it somehow got put in as unlceared funds twice. Whole thing took about 15 minutes, which also included changing my address as I had just moved.

It would have self corrected by yesterday morning (I could see all the numbers on the screen while she was working on it), leaving me without any cleared funds for 24h but it happened that I wanted to do a transfer to pay the removal company that day.

So yes, their staff can action things in a timely mannner.