Virgin on tearing my hair out! (Virgin One)

Member Name: petercaulf

Product:	Virgin One
Date:	01/09/03 (4238 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: HUGE savings in interest

Disadvantages: difficult to manage money, website is useless

I have been with Virgin One for two years now and without doubt the only advantage is the huge saving I make in interest owed.

Setting it up is fairly painless but you will need to take out life cover to protect the amount owed.

I’m sure you all know the principal by now, but in case you’ve just arrived on the last Mars shuttle. I’ll quickly explain the principal of the account.

Basically, it combines your current account, mortgage, loans and savings into one account. It means that any money in your account is set against your mortgage balance, therefore reducing the amount owed, and the interest payable.

Because the interest is calculated daily, the reduction is immediate, even if the money is only in there for a few days.

You are given a “facility” up to a suitable amount. For example £130,000 and although your payments reduce this balance, the facility remains the same. This means you can borrow against it at any time without applying for a loan. In other words, If your payments had reduced it to, say, £120,000 there is a £10,000 leeway that you can borrow again at any time.

The only stipulation is that your facility must be cleared within the agreed timescale, 15, 20 years or whatever.

Good eh? All your borrowings will be at your current mortgage interest rate, 4% for example and there’s no need to go to loan companies and pay between 7% and 20%.

For me however, there is one BIG problem – Ensuring that there is sufficient money in the account to pay the capital part of the mortgage.

Interest is deducted and actually leaves the account. The capital part however, has to be left IN the account to be set against the balance. How on earth do you keep track of it? With a normal bank account, your money goes in and then goes out again until you none left. With the One Account you have to total up your spending all the time to make sure you leave
a certain amount in the account and this I find hard to do!

Customer services think I’m stupid. After all, they have a website where you can create a “Blue world” for everyday banking and a “Multi-Coloured World” where you can set up “Virtual” accounts and payment structures.

DO WHAT???

A degree in finance and computing would help me to use the site I’m sure!

And what a useless site it is too. Slow to load and the login is tedious. Everytime you use it, it has to download an interface for you to use. Then you login with an alpha-numeric Global Keycode which is about 15 digits long. This is followed by a selection of digits from your passcode and some letters from your password.

Finally you can click “LOGIN” and a message screen comes up with some reminders about using the site. You then click on a “continue to login” button, which takes you right back to square one and you have to start the login procedure all over again!!! ARRRGGhhh!!

In conclusion, I’m now looking around at the many similar accounts that have been started by other companies. If I can find one that’s easier to use I will probably switch over.

It’s a great concept, but there’s room for improvement.

Summary: