Cater Allen Interest

[dude69]

I find Alliance and Leicester useless regarding my personal current account.

Poor online banking:

- transaction details take days longer than my other accounts to appear online. This coupled with a confusing lay out make it constantly difficult to know your actual current balance.

- I also don't like the fact they include the overdraft as part of your "balance". Making you think you have more money than you do. Just plain sneaky.

Quite a few banks show 'available balance'. Including lloyds. I would personally never come close to going overdrawn on my busienss account so I wouldn't worry.

I bet they don't take their online banking down from 11pm each night like Shabbey do.

[crack_ho]

"All we ask is that payments into the account total at least £1,000 per month, otherwise there is a flat charge of just £5 for that month only."

Typical A&L, big headline rate but crap conditions.
So I get penalised for not invoicing monthly or weekly.

Plus I have the two accounts at the moment and I would like the simplicity of one and then not having to monitor your balanaces to get the best rate.

Also notice that the A&L accounts are at issue 4, which means that they will a add new account with better rates and lower the rates on the old issues, meaning you have to keep uptodate and keep changing the account.

[FiveTimes]

I'm with A&L for business and its spot on. No problems with navigation, and usage.

The deposit account interest was one of the reasons I joined them

[dude69]

"All we ask is that payments into the account total at least £1,000 per month, otherwise there is a flat charge of just £5 for that month only."

Typical A&L, big headline rate but carp conditions.
So I get penalised for not invoicing monthly or weekly.

Plus I have the two accounts at the moment and I would like the simplicity of one and then not having to monitor your balanaces to get the best rate.

The interest difference can make quite a big difference. Over a day's pay.

Plus if you can just transfer £1000 from deposit account on 1st of each month and schedule payment back on 2nd.

And on a point of fact, £5/month is only 0.1% of a £60k balance, so even if you are lazy and have to pay it every month, you'd still be far better off.

Personally I'd much rather a high street bank than Cater Allen, who are only pushed because of their commission payments to accountants etc.

[dude69]

Also notice that the A&L accounts are at issue 4, which means that they will a add new account with better rates and lower the rates on the old issues, meaning you have to keep uptodate and keep changing the account.

On £50k:

Issue 4: 5.42%
Issue 3: 5.42%
Accounts from 13/11/06-31/03/07: 5.78%
Issue 2: 5.37%
Issue 1: 5.11%

All of them are pegged to base plus adjustment. These rates are exactly the same as what was first offered. So if you sign up now, you get base - 0.2%. Base rates have just dropped (today), so the rate will fall.

If you go back to 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/200602071...t/SB020001.asp

The advertised rate was 4.07%. As base rates have gone up, so have their interest, which is actually a nice deal for existing customers - they got 0.5% b elow base then, and they are still getting 0.5% below base now. No complaints there I would think.

[crack_ho]

What about debit cards? Can you get one on this account?

[too_many_details]

I'm with Cater Allen. Not bad on the whole but i seem to remember getting a card was not easy......

R

[FiveTimes]

A & L provided a debit card from the start