I noticed last night they’ve now got a sequel - with a whole family flying to cover personal, joint and the kids Kite accounts.
Everything else is exactly the same (family queuing at the bank, same music, bursting through the glass ceiling). I wonder who’s next? How can they symbolise a small business banking customer?
I can see what they’re trying to do with these adverts - have a running theme going through them so the first one might not be particularly memorable, but the whole campaign is greater than the parts, but not sure how much more they can do with the ‘queuing at the bank and breaking free’ idea.
Half the time I don’t think it really matter. They just want you to remember them.
The next time your current bank pisses you off, the next time there’s a feature you hear about that other banks do, or wish they did. Do you think “Oh yeah, there was that startling bank or something…” then it’s job done. It’s about recognition and remembering they exist.
I have barely ever needed to go to the bank and I’ve rarely had to queue. I think their idea of a high street bank is quite outdated nowadays. There’s a reason they keep closing - no one is using them.
Obviously there will be some exceptions in certain areas or with certain banks.
So, just had a message from Starling about their new T+C’s from the 1st Jan (with some of them being introduced on the 1st March instead).
The main change seems to be on cash deposits at the Post Office:
A limit of up to £1000 for personal account customers per calendar year, then charged at 0.7% of the deposit.
For business accounts, increase in charge from 0.3% to 0.7% with a minimum of £3 charge per transaction.
Other changes - don’t swear in the payment reference when doing BACS payment, references to ‘Goals’ in the T+C’s replaced with ‘Spaces’ and also they’re not liable if you don’t have enough money in your ‘Bills Space’ to pay a bill.
The exact phrasing in the message on don’t swear is:
“We like to keep things friendly at Starling. So please don’t use abusive language when making a payment, for example in the payment reference. If you do, we’ve made it clearer that we may suspend or terminate your account”.
I suspect a one-off between friends (or landlords) wont get triggered, but I wonder if this is a technical issue where people are putting abusive words into payment references for bills going to large corporations which is then not getting matched up correctly?
Seems a fair decision at least, heavy users of something that costs a business money should at least have to fork out for it. The fee isn’t extortionate at least.
Yeah I really don’t like how bills paid from Spaces are not shown in the transaction history. I understand why people would prefer that, but since all monies going into Spaces originally come from the main feed (and isn’t counted as spent), then if money going out of Spaces isn’t accounted for we find ourselves with a cashflow discrepancy. It’s like the cash just disappears.
I’m the opposite. The way Starling does it now gives greater visibility to my elective spending. I don’t need the greater part of the pie chart given over to bills every month, because that diminishes the room for showing what I’ve actually chosen to buy/spend on. I don’t need a visual representation that I’ve paid £690 to my mortgage every month because I know on a deeper level that it’s paid, and I don’t count it as spending month–to–month, but rather on a macro year–wide budget level.
