Anyone else caught up in this fiasco?
Been going on for 3 days now? I currently have 3 transfers to my account "missing", am unable to use my debit card or Samsung Pay and have just received an email from TFL telling me my travel payments for the last 3 days have all been declined......
Absolute joke, if you contact them all they are replying with are generic statements advising you can still use your debit card (you can't) or withdraw cash (haven't tried).
They actually advised people on Social Media, who hadn't received wages to go to a food bank or borrow money from relatives!
Suffice to say after nearly 35 years of being a customer we will be parting ways once this is over.
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Mostly due to trying to get better deals on savings rates, international travel, credit card cash back/points and account add ons like travel insurance I have accounts with 7 different banks 5 of which I have ability to spend money on a card with. My main one is santander. But also have amex, monzo, nationwide, Halifax.
If one of them went down I'd just use an alternative.
Fortunately I received my wages in the morning and was able to transfer some to our joint account before the mortgage came out on yesterday.
You lot are missing out. I make a serious amount in additional interest, cash back, points, completely free travel insurance for a year free international transactions and better exchange rates just by keeping my money mobile. We do a monthly review to make sure we're maximising everything (my wife's very good at this and we're both analysts so obviously there's an excellent spreadsheet). So far this FY it's at about £800 better off than if we'd just stuck to our main bank.
Just set a direct debit up on each and transfer the required amount from one to the other, then transfer it back again to the first account.
We each have a Halifax account which we pay our side hustle income into. This makes it easier come end of financial year for tax return and accounting purposes. We also like to keep it separate as we transfer from here to investments. Incomes not regular so sometimes these don't get funded at all for a few months. Still fine.
Monzo which I use for foreign transactions I only fund when I'm going abroad or sending money abroad
Would explain the lack of transfers.
I get for small amounts having a few bank accounts.
But if you've got a £4000 tax bill to pay unless you've got the money to have £4000 in each bank account you wouldn't of been able to pay the tax bill
But anyone who is employed or recieving a pension has the ability to shop around and get deals. From the OP it was pretty clear he was employed, hence my question.
In terms of the relevance - In response to the OP I asked a question about whether people do all of their banking with one bank as it genuinely surprised me that people would as they will be losing out on a fair chunk of cash. You responded to that saying not everyone can, which I agreed with but pointed out it's not reliant on huge amounts of cash and thay anyone employed or recieving a pension can do it. So it's relevant because I was responding to a point you raised about a question I asked in response to the OP. That's how conversations usually work
Its relevant because shopping around not only can make you serious amounts of cash bit also safeguard against this sort of situation (other than extreme cases like completing on a house).
I also don’t buy into the cashless society thing that forces you into technology when you’d rather not.
Point of note. I wasn't telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do. I asked a genuine question about whether people genuinely do all their banking with one bank. I was genuinely shocked that people might. I get traditionally you might have had a relationship with a bank and so stuck with them. But in this internet age with so much information and the market busier and competition so much more clear it just seemed obvious to me to take around of various deals.
I've explained my reasoning for doing what I do (and this is a benefit I hadn't really considered until this thread). Still not sure why anyone would limit themselves to a single bank when there is so much choice.
The point I was making is the totally unacceptable response to the problem from Barclays themselves.
Generic responses ignoring specific reasonable questions are simply winding people up and fanning the flames of panic.
They have made no formal statement other than "we are working to fix it and it's taking longer than we hoped". They have not said what the issue is - so speculation is rife it's a cyber attack.
I am lucky that it's a no more than a royal pain in the arse for me, however, there are 1000s who are on the breadline and haven't received wages, have no access to their money and are effectively being given a shrug of the shoulders and told to go and beg for help.
From my perspective alone, I believe the more banks you have the more energy and credence you inject into the hugely flawed capitalist system. That’s why, for me, First Direct (yes part of the very nasty HSBC group) as a bank is enough, and any extra money goes into premium bonds.
This is my personal perspective and I accept I might be the only person that feels this way.