Leaving the Halifax Bank

Huddersfield Branch of the Halifax Bank

Today I signed on to internet banking with the Halifax. I have two current accounts; yesterday they were named Paul Current and Joint Current. Today they were both named Current Account. I also have three savings accounts; yesterday each had a unique name. Today they were all named Instant Saver.

I rang them up to find out what is going on. Almost an hour later, I had the answer: you can no longer have alternate names for your accounts. At a glance, I can no longer tell which account is which. This is not very good. The person I spoke to said there was nothing they could do, but did give me £40 for my troubles. I said there’s something I could do: change banks.

I had another problem with the banking app.

My wife and I have a joint account to manage our living costs: council tax, energy, food etc. When we transfer money into the joint account, Halifax always sets the transaction description. It’s automatically set to the surname and first letter of the first name of the person doing the transfer. The problem is my name is Paul Chappell, and my wife’s name is Polly Chappell. Whenever we transfer money to the joint account, the description is always P Chappell, which is confusing. I did complain about this years ago. The problem has not been fixed.

My friend John told me that Nationwide was a mutual bank, owned by the people with accounts there. Now and then, as a shareholder, you get a dividend payment from them. So I decided to check them out.

Huddersfield Branch of the Nationwide

You do get a shareholder dividend every year. It’s a hundred pounds and is dependent on you meeting certain requirements in January, February and March. The dividend is better in my pocket rather than someone else’s.

I also checked out the interest rates and found that the Halifax had been ripping me off. The Halifax basic savings account pays 0.75% interest; the Nationwide pays 2.3%. I have a triple-access ISA with the Halifax; it pays 2.3%. The equivalent at Nationwide pays 3.3%.

Today I started the process of changing banks.