Alliance and Leicester - Any good?

[Argentice]

I'll start paying banck charges to LLoyds in January and I'm thinking about changing to A&L

No banks are perfect and different people have different experiences with the same bank.

But are there any reasons why I should not change?

99% of my transactions are electronic, but A&L don't say "free" for this

[IT-MPS]

We recently changed from HSBC to Barclays. They seem to be very good, mind you it depends on the contact you have in the Bank and how proactive they are.

The main reason why we changed is that we use Sage Online 50 and the Barclays acccounts we set-up download straight into our accounting package. Also, Barclays let you subscribe for a £1 a month to their Business Management Software which comes with some really good business software packages.

I wish you luck

Mark

[VeryMark]

We have tried to set up an account with Alliance & Leicester and gave up because they were so slow and made it so difficult. They were also pretty rude and unfriendly.

Currently, we use Abbey for free banking which works fine most of the time and you can manage your account online quite effectively.

If you want a personal business bank with a helpful manager you can talk to when you need i.e. no call centre, and reasonable charges, then Whiteaway Laidlaw (part of GUS) are very good - I can give you full contact details if you email me.

[annethedonn]

I'm with Lloyds and thinking about moving to A & L as well as they don't charge any fees for the following:

free current account, free & unlimited cheque deposits & issued, free & unlimited direct debits & standing orders, automated credits & free debit card & ATM withrdrawals up to £250. You get £1000 free every month then 20p per £100 for cash deposits.

Much better than the other banks - I just hope they provide a good service!

[multilingual]

We run with A&L and I have absolutely no complaints.

They offer completely free banking forever as long as you stay within certain limts, which are fairly generous to be honest.

They do allow online banking for international swift transfers, which is something no other bank can offer without an extra fee, and you can set up your own BACS payments for free too. You don't need to find a bank to make payments either, just pop to the local post office.

They are a bit slow is getting your account set up, which is a bit annoying, but once set up it is fine.

Would recommend.

JB

[hunny]

Hi,
I have just set up an A&L business account - and so far so good. They have been really helpful and set the account up within 7 days.

[Talkrussian]

We moved to them earlier this year. They were a bit slow opening the account and the Internet Banking service is a bit clunky. But balance that against not paying a penny in bank charges and it's worth the hassle.

Our decision to switch was simple; the charges levied by the high street banks on small firms are awful, and we didn't need a posh branch and business advisor who didn't have clue what we did and kept trying to sell us services we didn't need.

Neil McCafferty