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Post by moonraker on Oct 5, 2018 9:18:36 GMT
Early next month my fixed-rate deposit with the State Bank of India matures and it's offered me a renewal loyalty rate of 2% for two, three or four years. Not tempting, and I've found it the most inefficient bank I've dealt with.
When I checked comparison websites, Tandem Bank caught my eye, offering 2.4% for three years. I have investments with other market-leading challenger banks, so checked out its website, which highlights its app. It wasn't clear how one remitted a large sum of money - I prefer an old-fashioned cheque, though some new banks won't accept this, with the only method then being to remit electronically - something my bank charges £28 or so to do.
I rang up the Helpline, to be greeted with a bad recording of "Dancing in the Street". Then I got a voice saying they were very busy at the moment. I sent an email, to get an automated response saying "Currently we are very busy and it may be up to 5 working days before we can respond to your email". Not very impressive.
implies that one needs the app to operate the account. All I want to do is invest the money and leave it for two or three years.
EDIT: just had this email back - acceptably prompt: "To fund a fixed rate account we would require an one electronic payments into the account , if we do require further information you can send it in to our office. we do not accept cheques."
Usually my ID is confirmed within minutes of my confirming my application, but now and then a bank wants paper ID. I'd asked if I could present this at their London office - I'm close by a couple of times a month. But apparently visitors are not encouraged.
Dunno how other people feel about paying to invest - guess it's a question of balancing the cost against the extra interest.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Oct 5, 2018 9:45:23 GMT
Hi moonraker , I have no idea what you call a large sum of money, but it may be worth getting a new bank account. Several banks have a maximum faster payment of £100k and some have even higher by phone (I think Citibank is £250k - I only have £3k in mine so I haven't read those details carefully). I use first direct which has a limit just below £50k, so you could make a FSCS sized payment in two consecutive days (you can make them at the same time, but with different transaction dates). If your payment is above £85k you will probably lose more interest than £28 by sending a cheque. Edit: My post crossed with your edit chris would call this a race condition!
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Post by moonraker on Oct 5, 2018 11:00:08 GMT
Thanks for those tips, they're worth bearing in mind, especially that it be can better to pay for a Faster Payment than wait for a cheque to clear.
(I did this three years ago. Though the bank staff knew me well, they asked for proof of ID, only for the cashier to point out that my driving licence was 14 months out of date! I'd applied for a new one, but there was a cock-up either at the sub-post office or DVLA, which received my new photo but not the form that the counter clerk should have forwarded with it. Either that, or it had not been processed within DVLA. The Agency was very understanding and quickly sent me the licence - had I left it for two years I probably would have had to take a new test. And had I been stopped by the police ... So the Faster Payment fee was money well spent.)
I'm now looking at Hampshire Trust Bank, which offers 2.35% for three years' deposit.
EDIT: or so says thisismoney.co.uk, though the bank's own website says just £2.05 ...
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Oct 5, 2018 11:12:13 GMT
I'm surprised that your bank charges you £28 for electronic payments. I wasn't aware there were any UK banks that charge for faster payments, and especially not such a huge amount. If you're operating from a non-uk account then it might be worth checking out Transferwise borderless as a way to manage them at a far lower cost.
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Post by moonraker on Oct 5, 2018 11:36:07 GMT
That was three years ago, and I do lag behind with what's going on. I'll ask next time I'm passing - I'm still blessed with a small branch a mile away and a larger one four miles from here.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Oct 5, 2018 11:48:12 GMT
I'm surprised that your bank charges you £28 for electronic payments. I assume that is for a CHAPS payment if the payment needed is greater than the faster payment limit for the bank.
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benaj
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Post by benaj on Oct 6, 2018 7:05:14 GMT
personally, I like the Tandem Credit card for its goodies. Tandem fixed rate saving is not something for me at the moment, since there are so many other things out there. For those who like FSCS savings account, give numeos a try. numeos.co.uk/As far as I remember, Natwest do Free transfer over 250k in branch as BACS, required proof of ID and 3 working days to reach the recipient bank. I am pretty sure other banks do the same for free transfer like this. Anyway time is money as well, £28 CHAPS transfer could save you money in other circumstances.
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Post by moonraker on Oct 8, 2018 15:25:31 GMT
Early next month my fixed-rate deposit with the State Bank of India matures and it's offered me a renewal loyalty rate of 2% for two, three or four years. Not tempting, and I've found it the most inefficient bank I've dealt with.
I rang the State Bank of India Help centre to ask how my money would be remitted to me on the day of maturity. I was told that it has to go into the other account that I apparently have with them. This would appear to be the account where my initial deposit was made seven or eight years ago, staying there for a couple of days earning token interest before being transferred to a fixed-rate account.
I rather fear that the short-term account is the one that SBI closed a while ago because it was dormant - but then I had no use for it.
On the day after maturity, I was told I can go into my local branch - 40 miles away - and give it my instructions about the money in the short-term account.
Can't I write to it, I asked. Oh yes, but they would then contact me to confirm that was what I wanted. (A form of security check, I suppose.)
Having gone over that twice, I never did find out how my money would get to me.
I expressed my concern about this long-winded procedure and was then told I could approach my branch to see what it said. So that's an old-fashioned letter, as in the past I've had several emails left unanswered (and a letter is probably more secure).
If the result is a cheque, it's not absolutely certain that it will be made out correctly to my hyphenated double-barrelled surname. I had to write to SBI five times (the last one being an official complaint) about the hyphen, after my High Street bank had warned me that it would not accept cheques for a significant amount made out only to my last name.
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Mike
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Post by Mike on Oct 8, 2018 15:33:03 GMT
Inefficient and India in the same sentence..?
And to think that I saw it on mulberry street
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Nomad
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Post by Nomad on Oct 8, 2018 15:34:06 GMT
Early next month my fixed-rate deposit with the State Bank of India matures and it's offered me a renewal loyalty rate of 2% for two, three or four years. Not tempting, and I've found it the most inefficient bank I've dealt with.
ICICI Bank, also Indian, were a nightmare also.
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Post by bracknellboy on Oct 8, 2018 16:29:46 GMT
ICICI Bank, also Indian, were a nightmare also. +1
though I attach no weight or meaning to the fact that they are also an Indian outfit.
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Post by moonraker on Oct 30, 2018 18:36:46 GMT
Just an update after the various comments above: I decided that I could probably get to a Natwest branch to arrange a CHAPS payment around the time my SBI account matured - not always the case. So I looked again at the best rates. I hadn't been impressed with Tandem's response to my enquiry about cheques which left a couple of my other queries unanswered.
I was a bit wary of "Gatehouse Bank, formerly Milestone Savings, a new ethical Sharia-compliant challenger bank", and Zenith required one's passport number as part of its verifying ID; I don't have a passport. So I settled on Investec, with whom I had an account several years ago. There was instant acceptance of my application and with the matured SBI funds safely in my account I trotted into town and NatWest to transfer by CHAPS for a £23 fee. Investec's website says that on request it'll refund such fees to an Easy Access account, but it seems a bit of a faff to open one for just a single transaction.
Laudably NatWest asked me a number of questions to confirm that I knew the organisation to which I was remitting, I hadn't responded to an unsolicited email and that it wasn't for house repairs (this last of course being to ensure that I wasn't being conned by a guy knocking on my door to say my roof needed repairing).
I could have remitted in four daily payments from my PC, but this would have meant delaying the opening of my account - and the first payment would have alerted the NatWest fraud people to block it until I confirmed that it was in order.
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Post by moonraker on Aug 29, 2019 8:35:45 GMT
ICICI Bank, also Indian, were a nightmare also. Just had an email from Axis another Indian bank, advising that a fixed-deposit account was maturing in a month's time. (At least it gave me more notice than competitors.) It didn't confirm the maturing sum, so I rang them up. The lady struggled with my double-barrelled surname (which is understandable, as I wouldn't be able to immediately grasp some Asian names.) She didn't ask any of the usual security questions, not even for the account number.
I said that I had several questions, the first of which was the closing balance. "What's the second," she asked. "If I re-invest the money with you, can I top it up," I replied. There was a long pause, and I could hear her keyboarding away. "And how could I remit the money to you - by cheque or electronically?"
More keyboarding.
"Someone will get back to you by email within three days," she said.
Surely my questions were so basic that a bank employee dealing with phone enquiries should be able to answer them herself? And being a pessimist, I'm wondering how fully my questions will be answered.
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Post by bracknellboy on Aug 29, 2019 8:54:10 GMT
Just had an email from Axis another Indian bank, advising that a fixed-deposit account was maturing in a month's time. (At least it gave me more notice than competitors.) It didn't confirm the maturing sum, so I rang them up. The lady struggled with my double-barrelled surname (which is understandable, as I wouldn't be able to immediately grasp some Asian names.) She didn't ask any of the usual security questions, not even for the account number.
I said that I had several questions, the first of which was the closing balance. "What's the second," she asked. "If I re-invest the money with you, can I top it up," I replied. There was a long pause, and I could hear her keyboarding away. "And how could I remit the money to you - by cheque or electronically?"
More keyboarding.
"Someone will get back to you by email within three days," she said.
Surely my questions were so basic that a bank employee dealing with phone enquiries should be able to answer them herself? And being a pessimist, I'm wondering how fully my questions will be answered.
jsut to be clear: I have never held an account with Axis, and none of the above was actually posted by me. And anything I may have at one time said is not clear as it appears to have been overridden: I think moonraker has fallen foul of the pro-boards sub-optimal quote and edit function....
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Post by moonraker on Aug 29, 2019 19:07:57 GMT
Apologies. I did indeed cock up the quote & edit function. Thanks to bracknellboy for giving me the chance to plead exonerating circumstances, but I won't blame my carelessness on it being sub-optimal (though I have done such procedures without problems many times on other forums).
Moonraker
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