year later
Your feedback on Virgin Money, please? 
Did you come back to Starling? 
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I’m all in with virgin now. It’s my only current account and I have a virgin money credit card as well as they had a good interest free period that i could use for some holidays I was booking.
Virgin money app is slowly getting better but it is still nowhere near as polished as starling or monzo. But at the end of the day, it does everything that I need and has been reliable. I’ve only had to contact the bank once when a large transaction was blocked (transferring money for a car purchase) and the staff were helpful and it was resolved quickly so overall, I’m quite happy. They do a lot of competitions for customers as well, I even won tickets to a gig at the virgin money unity arena in Newcastle last year so overall I’m a happy customer 
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So, I was sat actually paying attention to an advert for the first time in a very long while - and noticed that Virgin Money were promoting their new incentive to move to them.
Basically, sign up, CASS and pay at least £1k into your account - and get a £150 Virgin Experience Gift Card.
That’s actually the sort of joined up product management that really only someone like Virgin Money could pull off - that’s pretty impressive. Although I’m not sure what £150 can get you with that?
If I was looking to change, I’d probably seriously consider that.
(when I said ‘new’ btw - that’s new to me as I don’t normally bother to pay attention to adverts. Not actually sure how long they’ve been offering this)
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I had a look – you could get a three treatment spa day for two, and a three course lunch for two (£99 + £49)
Or a few hours driving three classic cars around a circuit
It’s fairly decent actually I think if you go for the discounted offers. The full price stuff you’d have to top up the voucher for a spa day.
But then again, it’s not much better than getting the money in cash from another switch offer (if there is one). Then you can do whatever you want with it
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For me though, getting the Experience Voucher would mean that I would actually do something specific and different with it. Getting £150 in cash as a switching bonus will probably just disappear in monthly shopping trips.
Also, from Virgin’s point of view - providing this gift vouchers wouldn’t actually cost them anywhere near as much as £150 per account so for them it’s also a good deal. Makes them seem generous and it’s cheaper than just given people £150 each.
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Yeah, First Direct seemed to try this “tangible gift” route a few years ago, I remember.
Presumably it wasn’t as appealing to would-be customers, as they changed back to offering a cash bribe again fairly shortly afterwards.
I think they also had some issues with actually sending out the gifts, which meant people had to wait a while for them and they weren’t very happy with it.
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Virgin should be better at sending out gifts as it is an actual part of their business. Considering the number of people switching to them, their previous wine offer must have been pretty successful.
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Virgin Experience Days is a wholly independent company that they’ve licensed the brand to, I believe. But yeah, you’d expect pretty tight communication with Virgin Money, common service standards etc
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Good little read up here as I’ve been pondering on Virgin Money for some time.
It’s a shame they don’t carry direct debit notifications as well as money in, similarly to NatWest.
NatWest prevails in the packaged account area with their reward account, £10 per month, with £5 back in rewards, overall costing £5 for phone insurance, travel insurance, tastecard, and sleek dark mode app.
I recently took a TSB account for a spin, thinking their app would be good, it’s just very basic, a little clunky, no push notifications for anything, and pending transactions and round ups take forever and a day to sort themselves out. Not had any issues otherwise, except one password reset. Probably going to CASS it to VM based on the reviews here.
I have a Monzo account but it’s mostly for other people to send me money if I pay for stuff etc as it’s just easier than new details for some.
The App Store for Virgin Money shows me the budgeting screen with the balance after committed spends etc which is perfect for what I’m looking for. Does anyone have any review on this, is it accurate ie take information from things like Netflix, all direct debits and so on?
Has there been any update on the spending notifications aspect, to accommodate other payment types or is there any vision to know if this is coming at all?
Ideally I’d like everything under one roof eventually once I slim down my credit cards and loan.
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Virgin Money still feels a little clunky to me, similar to TSB although not as bad - you do get more features at Virgin Money.
The app sometimes triggers Face ID more than once, and moving between different accounts can also sometimes be a bit slow, but it generally does the job and the notifications seem to work OK.
You do get the 2% interest on up to £1,000 too, which is nice. The card is also quite good in my opinion. Not sure I’d use them as my only or main account, but perhaps that’s just because I’ve not got used to them enough?
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Do you receive notifications for direct debits at all now?
What about the budgeting part of the app, can you actively select what transactions are committed spends and essential spends so it accounts for everything in the month and you have clear indication of what’s left?
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Well, I applied around 2am to be met with a technical error.
I’ve since resumed my application today and it’s been referred to be looked into as noted in the image.
Anyone else come across this during their application?
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Yeah, I had this and ultimately gave up. They will probably email asking for more details
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I don’t know what more they could possibly want as I went through the equifax/Experian questions too.
I’ll get my shoe size and bowel movement count ready just in case 
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I didn’t get this - did they eventually open the account?
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but as to your questions:
You don’t seem to at all?
Card transactions do trigger notifications if you set them to, so that’s useful.
I think you may be able to, but as I don’t really use the account much I haven’t played around with this enough to know how well it works.
No problem!
Na it wasn’t approved, possibly due to recent tsb account which I’ve decided I do not like, slow app, no near future intent to roll out any form of notifications, app isn’t simplified in moving money between accounts, round ups take around 4 days.
I’ll just stick with Monzo for the time being, seem to be finally heading in a worthwhile direction. 
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Ah never mind!
You’re not missing much, aside from the interest, and I’m not sure it’s worth it frankly!
Their app is nowhere near in the same league as Monzo, Starling or other fintechs.
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Victory!
After deciding to contact Virgin Money by email about them not closing the M Plus Saver when the M Plus Current Account is closed despite the T&Cs saying so, I have finally had a response!
I did think they were ignoring me considering I sent my email a month ago tomorrow, but I got a letter through the post today. They took it as a complaint (I didn’t specify it was a complaint in my email) and the letter came with a leaflet about the Financial Ombudsman Service (a bit over the top considering all I wanted them to do was close my account, but it might be useful at some point in the future).
They supported my complaint and apologied. My M Plus Saver account appears to have been closed and they say they are looking into fixing the issue.
Note - I do know I could have just called them, but I didn’t want to wait for ages on hold for an account I wasn’t that bothered about being open.
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I’ll soon have three of those rogue Saver accounts. And not a penny between them
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I’m just glad I was finally proved right about what the T&Cs meant. I have contacted them in their in-app chat so many times and they have been next to useless, always just telling me to call up, but today I have a victory and I didn’t have to waste a single second on the phone 
I do hope they fix the actual issue soon. It isn’t the best having rogue savings accounts.
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