Reply to: Business account?

[dty]

Business account?

Understood. Considering switching from CA to Natwest. Free for 2 years, plus 15 days of Regus space in the first year. Interesting.

[TheFaQQer]

But you can't open a "forever free" one anymore. Only those who currently have them can keep them?

Correct. I was merely explaining how some people have a free for life Santander account.

[dty]

Santander used to do free banking for life. They tried to change it to a fee-based account, but there was a backlash and a threatened judicial review, so they abandoned that move. (linky)

You get some extras from the paid account that you don't with the free one, but they weren't enough to persuade me to lose the free banking.

But you can't open a "forever free" one anymore. Only those who currently have them can keep them?

[TheFaQQer]

When you say "free", I assume you mean "free for 18 months"? That's the only deal I can find on their site. Or did you get a special offer?

Santander used to do free banking for life. They tried to change it to a fee-based account, but there was a backlash and a threatened judicial review, so they abandoned that move. (linky)

You get some extras from the paid account that you don't with the free one, but they weren't enough to persuade me to lose the free banking.

[Kess]

As others have mentioned, Cater Allen's payment speed is a pain. However, one good thing about them is that, if you do have to call them, the phone is answered by a human being.

It caught me by surprise the first time. I was expecting to have to work through several levels of menus and then wait 10 minutes, so I was left speechless when someone answered straight away!

[speling bee]

I'm with Santander (was originally A&L till Santander bought them) and I pay no fees at all and haven't done for 6 years, now whether that's because it was originally a A&L account and it was part of their deal I'm not sure.

The only stipulation I think is you need a minimum of £1000 paid in per month otherwise there's a charge of £5. I only discovered this when I had a couple of months off so wasn't invoicing. When I queried what the charge was for and pointed out there was a balance of 10s of £k sat in there they still wouldn't waive it!!

Can you transfer £1000 from your personal account (use Director's loan account) and back again?

[Fandango]

I'm with Santander (was originally A&L till Santander bought them) and I pay no fees at all and haven't done for 6 years, now whether that's because it was originally a A&L account and it was part of their deal I'm not sure.

The only stipulation I think is you need a minimum of £1000 paid in per month otherwise there's a charge of £5. I only discovered this when I had a couple of months off so wasn't invoicing. When I queried what the charge was for and pointed out there was a balance of 10s of £k sat in there they still wouldn't waive it!!

[borderreiver]

They once did the same with me - mistyped the amount of a foreign currency transaction by a factor of 10.

It was nice to have just received 100k in the account instead of 10k, but after half an hour of gloating my conscience got the better of me and I phoned them to tell them their mistake ...

[pjclarke]

The other thing to remember about Cater Allen is that their FPS payments take 1 working day, which is at times rather irritating.

The other, other thing about Cater Allen is their anachronistic method of handling non-sterling payments. AIUI rather than crediting straight to your account there is a single RBS receiving account and you have to give the creditor the IBAN and Swift for that and get them to put your account name, sort code and number in the narrative payment reference field.

This went wrong for me recently when an agency (whose name indicates that they might well provide staff for Europe) made a payment with the receiving account name specified but not the ac number or sort code. Despite the account name (my LtdCo name, quite unique) being specified CA made no attempt to determine the intended payee and simply bounced the payment back, a process which took 10 (elapsed) days. Understandably the agency refused to resend the money until the original payment arrived back with them. The numpties at the agency then went and made the same mistake again, twice, which ran the warchest down a tad as these were 5 figure payments that were hanging about in cyberspace.

Oh, and there's a manual step in there somewhere. This month and last CA got the amount right but the currency wrong, that is, they credited the account in GBP instead of EUR, meaning the balance and credit available figure on the website were wrong for about 24 hrs. I queried this and was told the staff doing the transfer had miskeyed the EUR amount as the GBP amount (twice? really?).

Doesn't inspire one with great confidence.

[DigitalUser]

When you say "free", I assume you mean "free for 18 months"? That's the only deal I can find on their site. Or did you get a special offer?

If it's free for life then I'd definitely switch from CA - it is probably the only thing that keeps me with CA, despite their FPS and website shortcomings.

[dty]

I'm with Santander (ex Alliance & Leicester) and have no complaints. Faster Payments, free banking, decent website, what's not to like?

When you say "free", I assume you mean "free for 18 months"? That's the only deal I can find on their site. Or did you get a special offer?

[dude69]

I'm with Santander (ex Alliance & Leicester) and have no complaints. Faster Payments, free banking, decent website, what's not to like?

I had no probs with them before tbh.

[dty]

Ironic that CA are part of Santander.

[Runs With Scissors]

I'm with Santander (ex Alliance & Leicester) and have no complaints. Faster Payments, free banking, decent website, what's not to like?

[Craig at Nixon Williams]

I set the payment up earlier in the week in advance for the 13th. I think there's something odd about scheduled payments whereby they effectively take effect the following day. Then add the overnight you mentioned and voilà, 2 days.

TBH, I'm massively underwhelmed by CA and, having been a client for 2 months, am already considering ditching them.

If I was a client of Cater Allen, their ‘faster payments service’ wouldn’t impress me as they do seem to be behind the rest of the rest of the market on this front. However, I’d be happy for payments to take a day longer for the sake of getting free banking.