UlsterBank Extra Benefits Account

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DeeKie

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I need to open a joint bank account and was considering this one. Does anyone use it? Do you get €120 worth of value from it (its €10 a month).

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I am not interested in mortgage or loan connected to it, but more about tickets, hotels and other benefits that might apply. Thanks
 
I have a UFirst Gold account. Of no benefit really. Hotel breaks are available from lots of outlets for the same price or direct from the hotels own website. Poor choice of restaurants. I get free annual travel insurance and mobile phone insurance, I believe. However there is very little communication from the company about anything. I never get updated booklets or notification of special deals etc. I had to phone them few times but everything was very vague. They made a big deal of putting me in to a company plan with Quinn Health because I was a UFirst Gold account customer. Sure when I rang Quinn myself as a Joe Soap I was given the same deal.

Save your money and register with www.pigsback.com if you want to get daily deals on restaurants etc.
 
DeeKie said:
I need to open a joint bank account and was considering this one. Does anyone use it? Do you get €120 worth of value from it (its €10 a month).

[broken link removed]

I am not interested in mortgage or loan connected to it, but more about tickets, hotels and other benefits that might apply. Thanks
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It is not worth paying 120 EUR a year for this account when there is a free option.
 
I have this account.
I use the overdraft now and then, which is very handy as you dont get charged anything.
I have booked hotels through it as they were cheaper.
I have not used any of the restaurant benefits, they are not really in my area.
 
I have UFirst account.

Main benefit to me is mobile phone insurance. Contrary to what is on the website the insurance company insures iPhones. This insurance can cost €10 a month on its own. Another benefit I've used is the discounted personal loan rate.

Extra years warranty on goods, purchase insurance etc are also good benefits although thankfully I haven't had to use them yet.
 
I've had one of these for a number of years.

The "earn interest" is rubbish. You'll get a cent or two every now and again, unless you leave a lot of money in your current account. In which case your a fool with your money.

The "offers and discounts" is more or less rubbish in my experience. Who cares if you can get the early bird in some crappy place you wouldn't want to go to anyway for 10% less. To me this is only going to work if you are one of those people who meticulously cuts out and gathers and uses 5% off vouchers and coupons. In which case your a bit sad.

The interest free €500 overdraft buffer is great. And having a fixed monthly charge is also great as I have a lot of transactions going through my account. Both good reason for having this account. Also, it allows you open/use some of the better deposit accounts which are not available unless you are a uFirst customer.

Having this also allowed me to get a ECB+0.65% tracker - so so sweet !!!


You could do it the other way and get their free banking option (assuming its still available) - No charges provided your account stays in credit for the charge period. I used to do this, but at least once a year ended up going €2 or €3 overdrawn (due to some unexpected debit going through or the like) and then end up with a bill for €50 or €60 in charges for the quarter. There was a time you could cajole the branch staff to reverse this charge before it went through, but they are a lot lot less flexible about this in recent years.

So its horses for courses really.

Oh and they also have a "private banking" option. They sent a guy out to me a while ago because I was deemed eligible for this. We got on great until he started to explain that the cost of that service was a mere €50 per month - There must be some right tulips out there if they can flog this - what upset me most was that their sophisticated computer system and all of their data banks pointed to me as a potential candidate !!!!



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I have one and I never hear a thing from them by post, phone or otherwise. You can get FX commission free but it only extends to currency.
 
Thanks to all that replied. So it doesnt sound like its worth it then. It sounds you have to do all work to ensure that you get back the value of your charge, and its not made easy for you. Will pass on it I think.

Thanks again
 
I have had it for years as well- it was great when I was getting my tracker mortgage. I have used their phone insurance as well so it did pretty much pay for itself, I think I have nearly €3k free overdraft- thankfully not needed it in a while.
Will have to look into the Free Travel insurance though.
 
and they charge €14 a month for that. You can get ravel insurance for a family for a year for about €50 or less in some cases.
 
gunnerfitzy said:
Free travel insurance is only on UFirst Gold. Not included with the standard UFirst offering.
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Just in case others have a ufirst account and are not aware, the free travel insurance is available on the standard ufirst account - you don't need to have a ufirst gold account. I wasn't aware of this but looked into it today and just signed up. It is an annual multi-trip insurance cover which covers 15 days travel in Europe only and it renews automatically each year.
As others previously said above, I don't think Ulster Bank are very proactive in promoting the benefits of a ufirst account and most of them are probably not worth it but if you have have such an account (for us it's worth it alone for the mortgage discount) then this travel insurance is a nice benefit to avail of.
 
The staff do not seem aware of the Terms & Conditions and benefits of a uFirst Gold account. Twice they have tried to charge me for transactions despite the fact that I have a uFirst Gold account and I also keep a minimum of €3k in my account at all times.
 
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