Originally Posted by bonzoe

Seems to depend on the receiving bank as much as the transmitting bank, if I send a transfer to ING from HSBC it takes 2 days, but ING to HSBC takes 3! As you say a banking con so that they can lend the money to business at no cost to themselves.

Originally Posted by bob_builder

That was the main reason that put me off the ING account. You may get 5% interest but because the only way to transfer money in and out of the account is via BACS you would lose a lot of that interest over the period of a year. Also it is not really an instant access account if you have to wait 3 days to get at your money.

So I went for the Nationwide eSavings account that offered a slightly lower interest rate but allows you to transfer money online to your FlexAccount and then take that money out from the nearest cash machine on the same day!
(Interestingly, I notice the Nationwide now offers the same 5% rate - no pun intended!)

Originally Posted by Chris T

Hooray for online banking from me too. While this discussion has been ongoing, Mrs T has had her debit card refused at B&Q ... she came home to find a letter from Barclays warning of unusual transactions and advising that the card is suspended. I was able to check immediately and see where and when the amounts debited had been spent. Indeed they were dodgy - so Mrs T just phoned Barclays and a very nice lady explained what we had to do to get the money back.

She sends us a form, we detail the fraudulent transactions, we sign (in blood!), we get reimbursed. And because we can do that by referring to our balance online, instead of having to wait for a statement, we hopefully get our money back rather quicker.

She told us that the card has been 'used' (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) half a dozen times since it was suspended, in the West Herts/Northwest London area. Apparently what's likely to have happened is when Mrs T paid for something in a shop, some unscrupulous shop assistant took a second swipe of the card. How they managed to then use that without actually having the card in their hands is beyond me.

We're going to get it back, but I didn't need £200-odd to go missing from my current account right now!