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Jim Gilroy

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Review of the Birmingham Midshires, Easy Access Account:

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Excellent competitive savings rates and service

My parents have been with them for decades and have relied on them for their easy access savings, so when they launched a best buy easy access rate of 1.45% last year I jumped at the chance of opening one as these type of accounts don't stay around for long. It was also a guaranteed rate for twelve months and not variable like most; though once the year is up you have to make sure you change it to their next best. They notify you within 60 days to warn you however. Apart from that, I have found their customer service to be excellent, ( very friendly, professional and efficient) every time I've had to contact them. I also like the fact that you can make faster payments in and out of the account which credits or debits by the close of business the same day or you can set up a payment in via direct debit out of your nominated account instead. Good old fashioned reliable savings. I'll definitely be maintaining a relationship with them and can confidently recommend them to others. Reviewed on: 6th November 2018

Review of the Halifax, Ultimate Reward Current Account:

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Poor unhelpful unresolved complaints handling and resolution. Broken Online Annual and Quarterly Statements. Unreliable Mobile Phone Insurance.

I was until recently with Halifax for ten years. My arm was forced to switch from them recently due to their very painful unhelpful and time wasting complaints handling and resolution. To be as concise as I can, ten months ago their online quarterly and annual statements feature in online banking stopped working. As a result of being encouraged by them to become totally paperless, this hindered me from working out my finances correctly. E.g working out whether my overdraft facility was value for money. Those familiar with the Ultimate Reward Account will know how that works and with all the changes to the terms and conditions of that and the account features in general of which there have been many in recent years would give you a reward too I feel. Anyway, in October I also had a problem adding a new phone I bought to my Mobile Phone Insurance, dealt with by a third party company called Lifestyle Services via Halifax's Online Banking. By Christmas, I had made five calls to the company to get the details of my new phone added correctly. On one occasion the rep. deliberately changed the last digit on my IEMI number after the call to invalidate my policy. Why?! Just an example of the trouble I had with them. And the reason I had to keep calling them was because they were no longer updating the phone selection list online and were intending to remove that facility forcing you to call them up. What a nightmare when you did! You're not even allowed to request the same colour of phone any more. "You get what you're given!" I ended up calling Halifax in January about all the issues I had been having. Each of the three times I called up I was passed pillar to post for up to three hours on the phone getting no-where. I got the impression they were on target not to escalate complaints to customer relations and refusing to log complaints or take feedback. It was a nightmare. In the end after six months and multiple phone calls I got my complaint, one of them at least, escalated and it was like getting blood out of a stone for them to take feedback about the third party mobile phone insurance company Lifestyle Services they use. They were refusing to take ownership of it. During all this, last month, I had to go into my local branch to close an ISA. I waited ages for someone to appear that I had to go to the cashier and ask if I could do it with them. I was the only person in the branch at the time. They said they could. Then I explained the reason why I had to close it and they said they couldn't give me advice on such things. I wasn't asking for advice! I was giving my explanation as per procedure as to why I had to close the account. They just looked blank at me not knowing what I was talking about. It then boiled down to broken promises of getting the Online Banking System problems sorted out with the customer relations rep over the phone which weren't resolved up to the day I switched. I'd sent them clear screenshots of the issues I was having. They were admitting initially there wasn't a problem, to it was an ongoing problem they were aware of, to there wasn't a problem. The Customer Relations Rep was arguing black is white with me saying I didn't need access to my own account information to make an informed decision about whether any of the account benefits were value for money for me. Imparticularly the overdraft which as anyone with this account knows you currently pay an extra £3 per month if you use it by a penny even for one day. And that's just up to the initial 'free first £300.' It's an extra £1 per day on formal overdrafts above that. They argued that I never used my overdraft so it didn't matter. That was a complete lie! I did occasionally. When I was last called by the rep I asked her not to call me again and she said she would be closing the complaint then. I don't think she had the legal right to do that under FCA rules but I had already made my decision that she had forced my hand to switch banks. Do you want to pay £12/£15 per month for service like this?! Reviewed on: 2nd May 2017

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