Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Now that Barclays are scapping the excellent Woolwich Cardsaver account, are there any alternatives that give a similar level of usefulness from a savings account?

Sadly, none offer the combination of reasonable interest with international debit card access but there are a number of accounts around at the moment which offer most of the attributes of this sadly missed account.

If you don’t fail the credit check, the Egg Money card is excellent. This gives you a Mastercard debit card with no cash withdrawal charges at home and abroad (foreign exchange of 2.75% applies), good interest when in credit, an excellent rate if you’re overdrawn with it and internet access. Where it falls down is that it isn’t a true bank account so you need to quote the reference number on your card when making payments and you don’t seem to be able to get cheques written from the account if you needed to withdraw more than the £500 daily limit (although you could buy things with it). Also, since it is a credit card (albeit intended for savings), they run a credit check on you which may not suit everyone and there would normally be a charge for paying cash into the account as they don’t have any branches. Interest is about 0.75% more than Cardsaver and you even get a cash rebate on things bought using the card.

Similar to this is Cahoot which is a full bank account which offers an even greater range of facilities than the Egg Money account. Downside on this one is that there is a 1.5% withdrawal charge when used overseas (plus exchange rate charge). There’s a credit check on this one too and again no branches although you can pay money in via Post Office branches. Interest is about 0.5% more than Cardsaver.

Intelligent Finance is a more complex version of Cahoot but without the access to Post Office branches. Interest is about the same as Cardsaver if you go for their cheque account, about 2% more if you go for their savings account. Deposits are only by cheque in the post or electronically from another account.

The Easy Access Savings Account from Ulster Bank and First Reserve from Natwest offer pretty much all the facilities of Cardsaver (it’s a Solo debit card instead of Visa Electron) but with a much lower interest rate. However, as the equivalent account issued by Royal Bank of Scotland (who own Ulster Bank and Natwest) only has a cash card (Cirrus, so useable internationally) I wouldn’t depend on the debit card facility remaining. As it’s a savings account, there’s no credit check. Interest is about 1 to 1.5% below the Cardsaver rates.

Beyond the above, you’re limited to cash card based accounts, and for internationally useable ones there seems to be only one option: the Instant Access/Instant Savings Tracker accounts from Royal Bank of Scotland (Cirrus system, interest about 0.25% less than Cardsaver depending on your balance).

The best account for you depends on your needs. Cahoot is best overall in giving good interest and access to Post Office branches for deposits and withdrawals plus it’s a full current account. If you want to avoid the credit check the accounts from Ulster Bank and Natwest are the only ones with debit card access although if you want international access and can do without the debit facility, the Royal Bank’s Instant Savings Tracker account pays more.

If you drop the requirement for international access, your best bet is probably Smile‘s savings account at 4.5% (if you have their current account too) or indeed their current account on its own at around 3% (ie Cardsaver level) which is accessible through their branches and the Post Office too.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Barclays Bank bought the Woolwich Building Society around seven years ago but really did very little to integrate the two outfits until now. In fact, the only visible changes to date is that the Woolwich stopped issuing credit cards under its own name and various documents started having “a trading name of Barclays Bank” or words to that effect added to them.

The original reason put forward for their purchase was to acquire the technology that Woolwich used to implement its excellent Open Plan account, an account that let you offset any savings that you have against your mortgage. Not really a great move on the whole as the Woolwich technology was extremely primitive even then and, though operational, did silly things like charge you interest when you wrote a cheque against money that you actually had in a linked savings account and then refunding that the following month.

In due course, Barclays ran up a version for themselves and improved the offering from the Woolwich.

However, now they’re finally getting around to fully integrating the Woolwich into Barclays so all existing Woolwich accounts will disappear and be replaced by the corresponding Barclays ones. Snag is, that the Woolwich offered a number of quite sophisticated savings accounts and Barclays only has very simple ones.

Naturally, Barclays is putting this across as a series of “improvements”. They list 10, so let’s look at each one:

1. You’ll have over 30,000 staff waiting to help you including many who are presently serving customers in the Woolwich.

So, you’ll have Barclays staff to look to. OK, more people, so let’s count that as a real improvement 

2. You can use any of the 1,700 or so Barclays branches in the country and any Barclays Hole in the Wall„¢ machines.

Em, you already can so that’s hardly an improvement.

3. You’ll have access to Barclays telephone and online banking*, so it’s easy to manage your money when our branches are closed.

Woolwich already have phone and online banking, so that’s not an improvement.

4. You can get the same tailored service you expect from your Woolwich branch, only more so you can book an appointment with one of our Personal Bankers. And our specialists will help to make sure that all your financial needs are covered.

Actually, you’ve been able to do that for around seven years now.

5. You can choose anything from a wide range of Barclays products and specialist services.

You’ve always been able to do that.

6. You can also arrange your foreign currency and International Money Orders at any Barclays branch, at our Bureaux de Change or by calling the Barclays Travel Line on 0845 600 8090**.

You’ve always been able to do that, though hardly a recommendation given their charges.

7. You will also have peace of mind of knowing that your money remains safe with us. For instance, we offer free security software to active online customers€ .

OK, we’ll give them that one.

8. Barclays has a broader range of products and services so we can help you with your business finances as well as your personal ones.

Actually, it offers a narrower range of products though it does do business finance so let’s count that as a plus.

9. We also do more in the community. Spaces for Sports is just one example we’re investing over £30 million in helping communities to transform their sporting facilities in the UK.

Well, if memory serves, the Woolwich was pretty active in supporting local communities before it was taken over.

10. The same friendly staff will be there, helping us to stay one of the top 20 big companies in Britain to work for.

So, no change is counted as an advantage of the change?

However, what about the accounts that are changing. In fact, almost every single one is being downgraded.

Cardsaver

A very popular account which offers a Visa Electron debit card and pays quite good interest.

This becomes a savings account which offers (on request) a card which will only work in Barclays machines in the UK. Moreover, it will no longer be possible to get counter cheques so if you want to withdraw more than the cash machine limit (reduced from £400 to £300), you’ll need to open a Barclays current account. Oh, and you can’t make deposits in the ATMs any more.

So, this account has been “improved” by removing nearly all the facilities from it for which people selected it.

Open Plan for Savers

I suspect that the Barclays people have completely forgotten about this account.

This was even better in some ways as the Cardsaver account. It gave you on a savings account, a chequebook and full Visa debit card plus the ability to setup up to 12 separate savings accounts within it, each of which could have individual standing orders and direct debits against them.

This becomes a standard savings account which offers (on request) a cash card which will only work in Barclays machines and, again, a reduced limit of £300 per day. Of course, you can’t make deposits in the ATMs either.

If I’m right that they have forgotten about this account, it will cause chaos for those people who have it. All of a sudden their direct debits won’t get paid for a start. If they have remembered about it, I’d say that it could be rather a difficult account to map onto the Barclays range as it offers the equivalent to having up to 12 separate current accounts.

Almost all of the downsides arise from the fact that Woolwich was basically a savings institution when it was taken over whereas Barclays is a commercial bank. The effect of this is that the Woolwich had a much more sophisticated range of savings accounts and it would have been far simpler had Barclays adopted these rather than downgrading the accounts across the board.

After all, when the Halifax bought the Bank of Scotland, the accounts available to everyone in both institutions really did improve. But then, the Halifax was the savings institution and well aware that peoples’ savings needs aren’t met well by the offerings of banks. The Halifax/Bank of Scotland now offers everything that was on offer by both parties and indeed many products have been significantly improved by the takeover.

Barclays is in the process of taking a great step backwards in its offerings.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Thanks to Panthère rose for bringing a report highlighting the French as a bunch of whiners this morning.Why is that though? Well, simply put: because it’s an industrial relations tactic that always works in France.

There are untold numbers of examples of the government caving in to demands that one law or another should be dropped because it just didn’t suit some aspect of the population to have it implemented. Two particular sections of the population really stand out in this regard though: students and farmers.

Last year we had riots going on for months because the student population didn’t want a law passed that would, at a stroke, make it both easier to hire and to fire them. It would have led to a drastic reduction in youth unemployment because, at the moment, once you employ someone, that’s it, it’s pretty much permanent. Net effect of the current situation is that companies employ less people than they actually need which, of course, reduces the satisfaction levels of their customers somewhat.

There are just too many examples of the farmers taking to the streets to list them here but the one strand that they have in common is that the farmers want people to buy only French produce and to pay more for it. Hence, when there’s even the mildest of problems with any agricultural product from overseas, their first reaction is to insist on it being banned from France.

The demonstrations against Sarkozy have, of course, already started as he has a whole range of policies designed to drag French working practices and competitiveness into the 21st century. The changes are necessary but they’re going to be difficult for France to accept. After all, look at the problems that we had in the UK when Margaret Thatcher came to power.

So, yes, you could consider them as a bunch of whiners. After all, wouldn’t you be too if it worked every time?

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Normally the French beach resorts basically close in mid-September and don’t fully reopen until the following June but the season has been expanding in recent years.

When we went out to Canet Plage yesterday we were pleasantly surprised to find just about everything had been opened up. In fact, the resort was even more lively than it usually is most of the Summer season courtesy of a two day kite surfing run by the Canet Plage kite surfing club.

It remains a different story during the week though as most things can be expected to be closed, with the possible exception of the coming week which is a major holiday in France.

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Although your first thought might be that Americans in France would end up, for the most part, in the same areas of France as the Brits, this isn’t actually the case so funnily enough there is very little interaction between the two communities.

Generally speaking, the Brits end up in Brittany/Normandy, Dordogne/Loire, and Provence with the Americans largely confined to Paris, though obviously there are a lot of exceptions to this.

One of the more complete sites is Americans in France which seems to be a fairly complete reference guide for Americans aiming to move over here. Interestingly for me is that they still need to declare their income to the US tax authorities.

Of interest to the parents amongst us is the list of bilingual schools. You might think that the list on the site “must” be too short. There are bound to be more bilingual schools in France, aren’t there? Well, there might be a few more but there aren’t an awful lot more which is something you may want to factor in when you’re considering where in France you might want to settle. If you don’t arrange bilingual teaching for your children from about age 11-18, they will not be fluent English speakers and that will set them at a major disadvantage in their future life.

Not listed on the site are the international schools though there aren’t many of these either and bilingual is the way to go. International schools don’t raise children to fluency in both languages as you might expect.

Anyway, lots to see on the site.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.