First Active - Letter for changes to Terms and Conditions

Got a letter today from FA with a booklet about all of the changes to their Terms and Conditions - being applied from November 1.

From my initial read it says that credit transfers from their main savings accounts will only be possible to another FA account.

In my view that's not much use - I think I'll be looking to move my funds before Nov 1 as there's no way I want to be heading in to a branch to withrdaw funds from the account.

Anyone else read it like this - or have I got it wrong ?

Interesting spot. Good to see some people are reading the T&Cs.

AIB have this as a condition of some of their savings accounts. You cannot withdraw to an external bank account but only to another AIB account and then to an external account. Another example of silly anti consumer T&Cs.

Which First Active savings product are you with? I assume you are aware that the account will become an Ulster Bank account shortly?

If you are switching then make sure you check out the best buys here. Neither Irish Nationwide of Nationwide UK have this condition.

Best for amounts from €1 to €20,000
[broken link removed]
3.75% up to €20,000
2.50% from €20,000 with no maximum
Note 1: Interest paid annually.
Note 2: Interest rate includes a "bonus" of 1.25% that expires on 1 Jan 2011

Best for amounts from €20,000 to €2 million
[broken link removed] (Discuss)
3.55% on €2,000 minimum to €2m maximum.
Note: NB: Interest is reduced if more than 6 withdrawals are made a year (Apr-Mar).

Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing this out - I got the booklet in the post, but hadn't had a chance to read it. I have an e-savings account with FA and it seems that this will still be okay to make a credit transfer to a non-First Active account.
C

Carmel said:

Thanks for pointing this out - I got the booklet in the post, but hadn't had a chance to read it. I have an e-savings account with FA and it seems that this will still be okay to make a credit transfer to a non-First Active account.
C

Click to expand...

Not sure about that - need to have another look. I have the eSavings Plus account.

Nothing new there as far as the FA Regular Savings goes. Unless you had another FA account that specifically allows transfers to external accounts then you only had two options:
-ATM card (if you opted for it)
-Make a withdrawal in branch

This is the account on paper and I haven't attempted to see if it's any different in practise. You certainly can't do otherwise via online banking (last I checked). However your covered by having an eSavings account as this allows external transfers. First transfer from the RS account to the eSavings account (online again) then to the external account.

Ironically enough I remembered that many AAM users opened the Regular Savings to bypass the nightmare of the standalone eSavings application (back when it was 5.22%). It also helped that it had a competitive rate of 7.15% and it was SO and not DD operated. Anyways looks like it was a good pairing both ways.

I doubt the new credit transfer T&Cs will apply to the eSavings account as it would be fair to say that would sort of be contradictary to an eSavings account?