johncar61

A year ago I was encouraged by a friend to open a sterling investment account with Sol Bank. The staff were extremely helpful, I was offered a good investment rate for a fixed 12 months and the £25 which my UK bank charged to transfer ALL the funds was reasonable.

A year on: The investment rate with Sol Bank is now is very low so I decided to move the funds elsewhere. The attitude of the bank staff was hostile. I was accused of taking advantage of the bank as they had made hardly anything on my funds and I had to pay 0.6% fee on every pound of the capital to make transferred, even to sterling account in a bank within Spain. There was no way to avoid that charge, which came to £881 on my investment.

They may not have made much on my cash, through their imprudence, when they had it but if they could get every customer to transfer their funds ‘now that would be a nice little earner’ !

Please Note: This is a legal charge but just because it is legal will not inspire me to transfer funds back to the bank when investment rates improve nor recommend my friends to do so either.


signed ............

NB: Sol Bank have had the opportunity to consider this letter but have not chosen to dispute anything I have said.

manamama

Eek..I opened an sterling account with Solbank but never got round to transferring the funds.

johncar61

Maybe you transferred to a plan which they offered me which was a guaranteed return on the capital but it meant spiting my investment between two investments. One was based on the interest rate achieved by Telefonica and meant that I could finish up with no interest added, but the bank had the use of my funds for 12 months.

I was also not impressed in that there was a fundamental error in both the Spanish and English versions of the prospectus

That was why I transferred the funds to two other banks, Gib and Isle of Man. At least when I transfer from them I will pay probably £25 for a wire transfer or nothing if I do it by cheque. As I said there was no alternative with Sol, pay 0.6% or leave my money with them.

Madridboy

Buggers aren´t they! I opened an account with Sol bank when I moved here purely because they spoke English, soon regreted it, they just told me the good things in English and never translated all the parts about their bank charges....never dared to ask to use the bathroom there, they probably would have charged for that also.

ballin

I did a similar thing with their sterling account, complete rip off moving money from it, duly closed a few days later!

Tolly

we have banked with Solbank for 5 years and have both sterling and euro accounts and have had a number of investments with them - maybe we are lucky with our branch and manager - but have no complaints- sure they do apply charges to our account, i just email them - (both the person assigned to our account and the branch manager speak fluent English and are very responsive and helpful) and within a couple of days a refund appears - we have also negotiated on their charge rates with no problems.

We are more than happy with the service we get from our Branch - but i guess like anything it depends on the people you are dealing with

TheLostPhotographer

You're a bit of a plank aren't you?

Madridboy

Because.........?

jackytoo

We were in Solbank by default as they took over NatWest (Spain). we were in the marbella branch. No complaints re. customer service but their charges are over the top. Probably the most expensive bank for ex-pats

An elderly widow who I know was persuaded to invest in one of their schemes that if shares rise by x amount they will get x amount. She invested 25,000 euro and received 94.7 euro interest after 12 months

bil

Don't shares go down as well as down?

johncar61

Before I said I wanted to move the account my branch were wonderful to me too. All the staff helpful and friendly, nothing was too much trouble.

So with respect, the treatment a customer gets is not a measure of what WILL happen if they choose to transfer funds. 0.6% is a huge sum. It is applied on the whole sum no matter how large, even through of course there is NO MORE WORK in transferring £1 than many millions.

Examples:
£10,000 = £60
£100,000 = £600
£1,000,000 = £6,000


I tried to negotiate a better figure but they were adamant that was the charge and that was that. Head office reacted just the same. Not interested.