Alliance & Leicester

I don't know if any of you are aware of top cash back? its a website that offers cash back on everyday transactions online including Play.com, HMV, Tesco Virgin & even Sky!. Well while looking through the site in October I noticed that Alliance & Leicester were offering £100 to transfer you back account to them! Happy days I though free money, and A&L are a big concern so they will be good to bank with and the bonus was they weren't going to be charging daily fees on overdrafts like my existing bank Halifax. Well to be honest the whole transfer was a nightmare from start to finish, and I have ... more

The Alliance and Leicester is a UK bank. It was formed in 1977 by the floatation of the former Alliance Leicester Building society on the London Stock Exchange. I wanted to take advantage of the offer of free worldwide annual travel insurance and the £25 me and my friend would get if he reffered me as a new customer. Switching banks is a thing most people think is troublesome and complicated. It simply is not, and most banks now have a switcher service where they do all the work for you and you don't have to lift a finger. I was formerly with the Abbey. The Abbey had done nothing inparticular ... more

During my comparison on the www.moneysupermarket.com for savings accounts, I was shown that Alliance leicester is offering the best rate of interest or 5.35% AER for the online saver account. So I proceeded to fill in the application and started the process of opening the account with them. Remember I had also recently opened an account with First Direct.com. The website is cluttered with banners and I did not like the look of the website. The application process was similar to all the banks and had to fill out the details and then the application was mailed out to me for sending the proof of ... more

I've been with most of the major banks, basically because I'm of the opinion that if you're getting a crap deal somewhere then it's always in your interest to look around, and also because you're never going to be able to ascertain how good a bank is based simply on a website or brochure. There's things like how good the internet banking service is, how good the phone banking operators are and how useful they are when you need a helping hand in the form of an overdraft or such. And, as you can probably guess from the tone of my review so far, I wasn't too pleased with the others. NatWest, my ... more

Alliance & Leicester (formerly Girobank) launched a huge advertisng and marketing campaign in recent months to draw in new and small businesses to their business banking product. I am sure that like many new or early years businesses I was horrified at the charges imposed on businesses (from the four big banks) for basic transactions, hence the £10 per month standard charge for all basic transactions offered by Alliance and Leicester was a great incentive to me to enquire after a new account with them. OPENING THE ACCOUNT Opening the account with them was quite laborious and a slow process as ... more