A weird blog for me so far in the blogger's experience but it was such a weird experience I reckoned what the hell I would tell you all about it!!!
Today I went to my local Halifax branch as I have over the last 4 years to close my kid's regular saver accounts. This used to be a relatively pain free experience because both my kids had a save4it account that their matured regular saver would transfer into at the end of it's 12 months. I could therefore withdraw a cheque for each of them from their save4it account and leave the standing order going into their regular saver which now had the new yearly interest rate attached. All simple and easy.
Well Halifax has 'improved' their accounts so today I tried to do the above but instead the woman had to try to transfer the matured amount across to the save4it account as it doesn't go their automatically. When she discovered that accounts had indeed matured (there was a debate about whether they were or not as it wasn't clear on their 'new' system) she then explained that if I leave the standing order in place it will go into the regular saver account and just earn a really low interest rate. To open a new regular saver I would have book an appointment and bring the kid's birth certificates in (even though they already have these on file from 4 years ago when I opened their accounts at that time.) This I will have to do EVERY year if I want to keep opening accounts.
Also a child can only have one regular saver with the Halifax now even though before this September different relatives could open a regular saver on behalf of their grandchildren or nephews, etc. Well that is customer service for you!!!! And improved service where it takes 40 minutes to close 2 regular saver accounts and explain to me how their new accounts are operated. When I tried to explain that this all seemed really complicated and meant that I now had to come into the branch and waste more time setting up accounts the assistant looked at me like I was mad (which I probably was a bit by then.) I was only expecting to be in the branch for 10 minutes for goodness sake.
So I have closed all my accounts with them and they will not be getting my service from now on. I will be telling all my relatives to do the same although to be honest if this is new banking services at one bank I can bet my bottom dollar that soon others will follow suit and try and say that having extra staff on to attend to your banking needs (or to needlessly open regular saver accounts by looking at birth certificates they saw last year, and the year before and the year before that) means that they actually care because you have to see them face to face!!! I'm not buying it and hope that I can find a sensible bank out there or more likely I am going to put my money in something like www.zopa.com and cut out the middle man altogether. Come and join me at ZOPA
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