I am currently considering moving from AIB to PTSB too, because of the AIB charges. I have had an AIB account for over 7 years, and it has had a healthy balance for quite a while, but AIB still refused to offer any concessions on charging when I asked them recently. The people that I spoke to also didn't forsee them dropping their current account charges in the future (although I have to presume that they will have to at some point - they might well be getting by on the fact that many people are too reluctant to risk a current account change right now, but confidence in the switching service should grow over time).
One thing that annoyed me, and encourages me to move from AIB, is that their staff were adamant that PTSB has hidden charges which make them far more expensive than AIB. When I queried what these hidden charges are, the AIB people came back with things like "dropping in to discuss your account will be charged for" (it isn't, but PTSB will charge you to have someone discuss managing your account with you, probably much like any bank including AIB) and "making withdrawals with the PTSB ATM card while abroad will cost you money" (don't care, I choose my credit card for that anyway). They verge far to close to blatantly lying for me to really trust what they say about the cons of moving to PTSB. It is good to hear that people have had good experiences making such a move as that is all the encouragement I need.
One other thing re AIB: I find their online service to be inferior to that of PTSB, from a networking security point of view. To access the AIB service, you need your registration number, your access code, and the last few digits of your home and/or work number. By comparison, for the PTSB online service you need your registration number, a password (that you select yourself), and your access code - the password is inherently safer than the phone number that AIB rely upon. Also, I have noticed that the AIB online service seems much more predictable in the digits of your access code that it looks for (it asks you for 3 digits, from specific positions) - whats more if you mis-type them, it'll ask for the very same digits again, which provides a means for someone to repeatedly try different numbers until they hit the correct ones (assuming they already know your registration number and phone number(s)). Basically, I find the security around the authentication stage of the AIB online service very flawed - it is shoddily implemented. The PTSB service has its own issues, but overall I find it a better service. Oh, and there is also the issue that occasionally the AIB service redirects you to an AIB server whose SSL certificate doesn't match the website name (or at least it did a couple of months ago, for several weeks), which isn't a problem as such but it is another indication of a poorly implemented/managed service.
