Online banking inflexibility

Barclays will let you set up a standing order; Weekly Fortnightly Every 28 days Monthly Every 3 months Annually Specific day of month last day of month Last M,T,W,Th or F of month Every 2 months Every 4 months Every 2 years Half yearly Last working day of month plus others.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Tumbleweed in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

Hmm.. So it's just my bank being inflexible .. :-( I wonder why..?

Tell us who your bank is. Name and Shame :-)

Is it your bank in general or just the people who designed the internet system? The main banking computers may well be able to cope with more complex patterns.

Incidentally, I noticed recently that there is a major project underway at the moment to upgrade BACS to new IP-based technology, so it will be interesting to see if it produces a visible improvement. I think one effect is supposed to be that we go to next-day clearing.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Tumbleweed in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

Nationwide, who are very good in all other respects, so I'm unlikely to be moving accounts over this.

After going into my branch, asking if other standing order frequencies were possible (No), and then filling in forms for multiple SOs (I decided to relent and just go for 2 SOs to give a fortnightly effect, rather than fill in 4 forms), the SOs have now turned up on online banking as bill payment options (which I have to do manually), rather than as SOs, thereby defeating the whole purpose of the exercise .

If I can't get them to sort this, I can see I'm going to have to set up SOs into my other current account (different bank) and then setup SOs to pay the bills from there. But that's getting to be a ridiculous amount of hassle..

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Stephen Burke in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

It's the bank in general. The paper forms in branch also only have the same limited payment options. I asked and they said they couldn't do it..

What's the bets payments would still take 5 days to transfer "for technical reasons", from an accountholder perspective? :-(

IIRC Nationwide were one of the first financial institutions to do on line banking and it consitently has good scores in comparative ratings.

That isn't relevant here, since the OP makes it clear that the problem is in the underlying systems and not just the online part.

Also personally I don't think the NW online system is all that good, I use it for the CC and an InvestDirect account and it seems fairly clunky to me, I would rate both Barclays and egg as being quite a bit better.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Stephen Burke in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

I know, but they provide me with banking services so that's bank-like enough for me. ;-)

As a customer (or member, even) I shouldn't need to know or care how it actually works behind the scenes. It's their problem if their operational procedures aren't up to scratch.

Well, I've had a current account with them since the late 1980s, so you'd think they'd have time to get with the programme by now ;-)

It now turns out upon further enquiry with the online banking staff that their credit card division refuses to take payment by standing order, full stop, which is pathetic. This leaves me with the options of having to remember to manually make bill payment transfers or have them take the full monthly payment (in one large lump) by direct debit - but only after delaying payment long enough to let as much extra interest as possible rack up before taking it. :-(

You'd almost think they were trying to make it hard for you to pay off your debts or something, wouldn't you..? ;-(

David.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Stephen Burke in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

I've not had experience of any other online banking systems (many of the others seem to expect you to phone them to register, err, yeah, right, kinda defeats the purpose of the internet) but Nationwide's system seems perfectly good to me. Apart from this current problem (which is a problem with their method of operation in general) it does everything I want.

And it's not pointlessly picky (aka broken) about which browsers it likes to work with, either, which is an *essential* feature for me.

David.

Are you saying this in relation to Nationwide?

Robin

Well, OK, except that you're now complaining that they *aren't* bank like enough!

Financial companies tend to be very conservative when it comes to updating their systems, bugs can be rather expensive ...

How can they tell? Standing order is a push, not a pull, if money appears in the account how do they know how it got there?

Actually I wonder if they thought you were asking if you could clear the whole balance by standing order, which of course is impossible.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from robin in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

Yes, Nationwide Credit Card Services seemingly won't accept payment by standing order, and it seems that Nationwide BS won't set up such standing orders if I ask them to.. :-(

David.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Stephen Burke in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

Well, I have a possibly naive expectation that if they attempt to talk the talk, they should walk the walk ;-)

Well, if they don't know how it got there it won't go towards paying off _my_ credit card bill, that's for sure! ;-/

But since standing orders can include a payment reference that should cover that problem. However, it seems that the main BS part of Nationwide just will not let me set up a standing order to pay into their credit card division's payment account: when I tried, the "standing order" forms I filled in (real, explicitly clear paper forms in-branch) appeared in online banking as (manually-performed) "bill payment arrangements" rather than as standing orders, and when queried, they simply required "Sorry, can't do that". :-(

I suppose the question is: has anybody else been able to make payments to their credit card bill by standing order? It may well be quite common with all banks: after all, if _we_ get to choose the day we make an automated payment, it means _they_ can't delay automated DD payments for as long as possible in order to charge as much interest as possible in the meantime..

David.

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Stephen Burke in uk.finance about: Re: Online banking inflexibility

If they did assume that, then they're terminally stupid, since I completed the form to say "Pay x amount this month" and "Pay x amount next month" and "repeat until cancelled", where x

I use all three. Egg's is mostly good for bank / credit card stuff (better than the 'real' banks), but cumbersome for investments. And (big, big deal for me) Egg have no export of transactions in any form, which is utterly crap. For some reason, this seems generally to be the case with the newer internet banks, whereas all the 'real' banks do have it, when you'd expect it to be the other way around....

Because a credit card account isn't a bank account - they have to recognise the credit card number in the reference field and apply the funds to the right place.

Yes. I've been playing the balance transfer game for a while, and I have standing orders set up to pay the minimum payment (as it was originally) to Marbles, Morgan Stanley, Capital One and Halifax. I've never come across a card you couldn't do this with to be honest, you just quote the card number as the reference.