Rubbish!

“Rubbish!”

Written on: 27/04/2012

I can only echo the previous poor reviews of the Halifax children's regular saver accounts. I have never had such a bad experience with any bank before (I bank with first direct who are wonderful). I tried to open accounts for my 4 children. The first problem was having to attend a Halifax branch in person. I work full-time but managed to get to my local branch eventually. The 'signing on' process was tedious and extremely lengthy. After a few weeks there was no sign that the accounts on the website were functional. There was no way of communicating with Halifax online although these are supposed to be online accounts. I phoned to be told that I needed to go back to my local branch as they had made mistakes on two of the accounts. I refused and was told that they could make the changes over the phone after all. I had to make numerous phone calls to get the accounts opened. Each time I looked at the website 2 different accounts would be inactive, even though they had been activated after a previous phone call. Payments from my bank to the accounts were bounced. It was like some terrible joke. When at last all 4 accounts were active, all money transfers were again bounced as they, one by one, changed the account codes for no apparent reason. At last all seemed to be going smoothly for a couple of months, but no, they started bouncing back money that should have been transferred from my bank to the childrens' accounts. Again, it would be different children's money sent back each month! First Direct have been phoning and e-mailing me each month worried about the money being returned by the Halifax, but I have had no communication at all from the Halifax apart from a phone call trying to sell me other products! I am going now to close the accounts. I will not have received the 6% interest but I am past caring. I cannot believe how poor the service has been and I will not be going near the Halifax again.