Free banking - Page 2

Thanks for this.  It may be that my fury with Cajamar is more the result of my impatience with many online services in Spain - it seems they have a bit of catching up to do in comparison with how banking and other apps work in the U.K.!  I have been using IT at work and home in one form or other for the last 40 years - and my patience with over-complicated systems is not great when I know things can be programmed better if they wish.  Be that as it may, I am definitely not happy at the moment.

 How easy was it to change your direct debits etc when you moved from Cajamar?  I like to avoid too many temper-busting sessions with funcionarios and bank officials. My Spanish is perfectly adequate but the temptation to revert to Anglo-Saxon can be hard to resist.

I got a list of my direct debits from Cajamar and Sabadell transferred most of the direct debits for me but advised I had to transfer a couple myself which actually was straightforward face to face.Think it was basura .

No, em68, your fury is well deserved!

I’m now looking to move our joint account from Cajamar.

Having worked a 300 user helpdesk for c.30 years I have a lot of patience, but Cajamar really deserve a prize for appalling service. They also deserve an award for blatant racism in branch. Yes, surprise Cajamar, some of us Brits have reasonable knowledge of Spanish!

I’ve had many many problems with Cajamar, the most serious being fraudulent activity where they have been completely unconcerned. Judging by their unbelievable charges for my ‘ordinary’ account they’ve no reason to worry about compensating (eventually) for fraud, as they’re ripping off so much money from innocent customers.

They take forever to answer emails. They also won’t take any responsibility for problems that are clearly their fault.

I had none of these problems when we banked with Solbank Banco Sabadell. We started at Puerto Rey, and then we were moved to Vera by them closing the branch. We had a Prestige account with charges and wanted to go fee-free by putting money on deposit. They absolutely refused to assist in changing to fee-free, despite us wanting to deposit significant savings.

So we stupidly moved to the highly recommended Cajamar. It was a case of Frying Pan into Fire for us unfortunately. :o(

I’m now looking at BBVA Fee Free OR going back to Sabadell if they will do fee-free with some ‘attached’ savings. I saw someone on here recently saying that they had €1000 on deposit and thus had no fees at all. I really don’t understand that, as we’ve twice been told now (in the Vera branch) that they don’t do that. Posters here say that they do…

Are we missing something here? Do we need to take in a highly polished apple or something? :o)

I'm in Zurgena, but branch location is not so important nowadays of course. I’d be grateful to hear from BBVA account holders or Sabadell account holders with their experiences, good or bad.

I’m with Sabadell and have a fee-free account.  They require for a fee-free a minimum of 700€ a month going in plus one of their “products”.  I have a Sabadell investment account with 1000€ in it and that does the trick.

With the 700€, you don’t even have to have fresh funds coming in - withdraw the money from the account, pay it back in via the ATM - and that does it; or as I do, send 700€ to Revolut / Wise then back again to your account t and that is seen as 700€ coming in.

I’ve been with Sabadell Vera since 2014 and haven’t paid even 1c in fees for anything.

Cajamar have given us terrible service and we have to set aside a full hour at least to go to branch. There have been unexpected charges and also they’ve paid DDs that we’d cancelled. Their app is difficult to navigate with messages all in very small pdfs that are difficult to read and translate. Questions and complaints have been unanswered or dismissed so we’ll be glad to move on. We’ve just set up an account with Santander (La Cañada) and they promised to transfer all DDs from Cajamar. It hasn’t happened yet but this is Spain but meantime their app is much more straightforward and there are English speaking staff in branch which is a bonus

I have been with Sabadell for a number of years and I think they're probably the best of a bad bunch. I also understand you can have an investment account to eliminate the fees, could you let me know what it's called?

They have a number of different Investment accounts all with different risks.

I’m using the Sabadell Garantía Fija - the joy of that one is that if you leave it in for the minimum term (5 years), you are guaranteed to get back at least what you put in, no matter what the markets do.  The idea of course is that your investment grows, but if the markets tank and your investment drops, at the end of the term you are guaranteed not to have lost anything 

Thanks for that. I assume if I invest €1000 as a one off, provided I transfer €700 a month there will be no bank charges. I'm currently paying €20 a quarter. 

That's it - as long as you have one of their "products" and move 700€ into the account each month, you can ask to be upgraded to a fee-free account.  You have to ask - it won't happen automatically.  It used to be called the Expansión account, but now it's just "Cuenta Sabadell"

I have a Cuenta Sabadell account,transfer from Wise about 1500 per month, I have a credit card ,regular direct debits for utilities and a home insurance but I pay 20e per quarter. I really like the app and find the staff helpful although my local branch has now closed. I would really like free banking but because of the reliability of the app I don’t think I will change.