Sabadell Bank compared to other Spanish banks.

While many of us are still pondering over the Sabadell takeover of Lloyds Bank in Spain, I just found some information about Sabadell Bank in Spain, on-line, and would be very interested to known just how true any of it is:

It says that Sabadell is one of the largest banks in Spain and they belong to one of the largest *ATM networks in Spain. *Therefore in theory there should be no problem finding a machine to withdraw money.

Apparently, the website is in English and very easy to use and navigate (We haven't used it yet to find out).

They have English speaking bank employees in most branches.

They have No charges for credit cards, debit cards and normal transactions as long as you meet the income requirements and these can be negotiated. ( Is this 150 euro average minimum? - It would help to have more information on this!)

They offer a cash back service for paying utility bills via direct debit. (How does this work?)

Can anyone who is with Sabadell already confirm any of the above please? Also how do other banks compare? If you are with another bank can you tell us how your bank works for you?

Any help appreciated.



Jan

Well Jan the branch in Quesada is excellent but very busy because of its excellence. They have the best customer satisfaction index of all banks in spain and their equity or liquidity is on par with all Spanish banks. The staff are excellent and all muli lingual speaking english, german and french as well as spanish. I dont have my pension paid in so the credit/debit is 25 Euro a year but am thinking of changing that and I know that if the pension amounts to 600 Euro a month no charges, that is the case at the Deutcher bank. Mike

ready766 wrote:Well Jan the branch in Quesada is excellent but very busy because of its excellence. They have the best customer satisfaction index of all banks in spain and their equity or liquidity is on par with all Spanish banks. The staff are excellent and all muli lingual speaking english, german and french as well as spanish. I dont have my pension paid in so the credit/debit is 25 Euro a year but am thinking of changing that and I know that if the pension amounts to 600 Euro a month no charges, that is the case at the Deutcher bank. Mike

Hi Mike,



Good to know - Just one thing though, does that mean that there has to be a regular payment into the account each month to qualify for no charges?

Jan.

its the same with all banks, to have no charges you need a regular income or pension coming in..........Spain is the same as UK in that.

ready766 wrote:its the same with all banks, to have no charges you need a regular income or pension coming in..........Spain is the same as UK in that.

We have two current accounts in the UK and both have no charges, one has no regular income coming in and one has pensions coming in. In fact Halifax gives us £5 a month if we have £1000 credited into the account each month, which we transfer from another account when we remember, when we don't do it we just don't get the £5 bonus but they don't make any charges on the account ever.

We have never had any charges on our Halifax or Lloyds Spanish bank accounts either, except a nominal fee for issuing the Debit cards each year, and we definitely never had a regular income into those - We just transferred a lump sum in there about three times a year.

Maybe it has all changed in Spain and we were just kept to our original conditions for the last eight years (??)

Jan.

Any more news on the Sabadell transfer from Lloyds?

Guapa wrote:

Jan wrote:Any more news on the Sabadell transfer from Lloyds?

Friends, who are non resident like us, who have property in Los Montesinos, have found out that Caja Rural .. who have a branch in Los Montesinos .. only charge 4.50€ quarterly with a charge of 15€ annually for a debit card so they have been telling us about it.

We plan to go to see the bank in person next week to see how easy it will be to change over to them. At this rate Sabadell's Lloyd's customers will be heading out in droves because of the inflated charges, after being used to virtually none.

That's interesting Guapa but it's difficult to see going by the post by Panchotaff on the "Sabadell Bank - Information on the take-over from Lloyds" topic, why people are going on about 'inflated charges'. Panchotaff went into the branch and was told that there will be one set of maintenance charges per joint account of 15 Euro per quarter and we will be charged 9 Euro a year for each of our debit cards, which is what we are charged now for our cards. As far as I can see there doesn't seem to be any other extra charges for an account in credit or for ATM cash withdrawals.

I may be being too optimistic but it doesn't seem as bad as we were led to believe by all the 'Chinese whispers' over the last few months. Also being in the UK until April means it would be difficult to change our bank account in Spain, so I suppose I have another reason to have HOPE that it won't be that bad staying with the 'devil we know'!



Jan.

The charges mentioned above, don't match the ones explained to friends who opened an account at the high street branch just last Monday. They have been told, the charges are 24 euros a quarter for the joint account charges, and 15 euros per card. They also have very high charges to raise a cheque for house purchase, my friends were told, that each 100.000 would cost 150 euros.

The Cajamar Rural waive the bank charges, if you deposit 1061 euros, in their share account. They also pay 1.5% interest on the 1061 euros, which I know is not much, but waiving the account charges more than make up for this. The card is free if you use the debit/credit card at least 48 times per year. Otherwise it is 15 euros.
Cheques are a lot less to raise also. Cash can be drawn from any Cajamar Rural cash point at no charge, so maybe this is an option for some if you.

Just a quick question - Has anyone noticed a "SEPA" debit in their Lloyds bank account of 49.94 euros. I don't know what Sepa is or what the payment is for - Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jan.