current account switch dropped a mortgage payment...
So I switched current accounts recently; supposedly this is now a fully automatic process where they transfer all your direct debits and payments across, and for 13 months any payments to the old closed account are forwarded to the new one. Luckily I was cautious enough not to trust this entirely, because it didn't work for my mortgage payment...
What seems to have happened is that Lloyds told YBS about the account change and provided a new set of direct debit information. YBS then said "OK, we'll throw away the old DD info and use this; except we can't take a DD payment from a new setup instruction for 14 days. Whoops, your monthly payment happened to be within 14 days of the changeover? We'll just fail to take that payment, then." I think this is YBS' fault fundamentally -- they need to either be able to handle having two lots of DD info simultaneously, or to be flexible enough to postpone the payment until the 14 day timeout has been reached. YBS however seem to think the banks shouldn't be sending them DD changeovers close to mortgage payment days.
Anyway I've manually made the mortgage payment now; I don't think I have the effort to try to complain about this to either institution. If you're planning a current account switchover you might want to look out for similar pitfalls, though.
What seems to have happened is that Lloyds told YBS about the account change and provided a new set of direct debit information. YBS then said "OK, we'll throw away the old DD info and use this; except we can't take a DD payment from a new setup instruction for 14 days. Whoops, your monthly payment happened to be within 14 days of the changeover? We'll just fail to take that payment, then." I think this is YBS' fault fundamentally -- they need to either be able to handle having two lots of DD info simultaneously, or to be flexible enough to postpone the payment until the 14 day timeout has been reached. YBS however seem to think the banks shouldn't be sending them DD changeovers close to mortgage payment days.
Anyway I've manually made the mortgage payment now; I don't think I have the effort to try to complain about this to either institution. If you're planning a current account switchover you might want to look out for similar pitfalls, though.