Hallifax advised me their own product is crap!

poppyolivia

Mikeyorks wrote: »

You only get 10% on the money that's actually in the account at any one time. You only have £200 in for a full year! The rest is in for 11 months / 10 months etc. So, you finish with an average £1200 in there at 10% ..... which works out just better than £120 gross interest. Read this bit of Martin's article on Regular Savers :-

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-regular-savings-accounts#dont

Right I get it now!!:o My DH is sitting here saying 'thats what I said!'..did he ever!:D ..thanks..its still better than we were getting so alls good! Gonna read the link now.

Thanks again!

Edited to say..I'm Matt!lol

dunstonh

I'm sure Dunstonh has a comment for this :rolleyes:

I'm speechless. That doesnt happen often does it Your post was spot on LTL.

The Halifax sales rep has basically shown all the things that are wrong with tied salesforces. Low skilled advisers (who wont be able to be called advisers from next year), with low quality products trying to sell using dodgy sales tactics to low knowledge customers who wouldnt know good from bad.

Ok, not that speechless

LongTermLurker

dunstonh wrote: »

I'm speechless. That doesnt happen often does it Your post was spot on LTL.

I also was speechless - it's hard to believe such blatant mis-selling. I'm just amazed it took you so long - I thought you'd have a search for advisor .and. bank .and. invest

I don't want to malign the Halifax unfairly. I wasn't pressured into anything. The lady's opening gambit was "Do you realise you won't make 10% on the whole sum invested?" - a legitimate warning. Then she totted up the actual amount and said "That return on six grand? That's rubbish".

Sorry, that is worth maligning the 'advisor' immediately - it is so wrong. As others have said, the point is that money is drip fed. The point is that you are putting away what you can afford each month.

I realise it all depends on your attitude to risk. So my question is really: what's the least risky type of investment ISA?

It's worth pointing out that a S&S ISA isn't a flat structure like a cash ISA. Think of an ISA as a crispy shell around your investments - inside, you can have (virtually) anything. The lowest risk (and also the lowest potential for long term growth) would be Government Bonds, aka Gilts. TBH current cash deposit rates are astoundingly good, and you should always build up a good cash base (several £000s) before even considering investments, imo.

So if I decide I have zero tolerance for risk, then would I advised to put my full tax-free allowance into a cash ISA before contemplating a regular saver?

Definitely; "low risk" is not the same as "no risk" and "low risk" will see your cash drop in value sometimes - I almost guarantee it! It's a hard call between a 6.x% cash ISA and the 10% Hx RS account - the former will pay you interest tax free forever, while the latter will net you 8% after tax for 1 year (assuming you're at lower rate). If you were only saving, say, £100pm then I would go for the 10% account because it would take you 3 years at that rate to build up 1 year's cash ISA allowance. If you have closer to £300pm and can keep that up for over a year then it might be better to go for the ISA because it will be more beneficial long term. If you have more than £300pm then ISA first, 10% RS after that.

In my view, you don't sound like you should be looking to invest in the stock market - no disrespect, but you need to understand what you're getting into before considering investments and I'm not sure that you do.

When I went in to cancel my 7% account and open a 12% one, the guy behind the counter said "you do know you won't get 7% if you close it?" to which I replied "Yes, but there's only 500 quid in it so I'm not losing much" - that was as hard a sell as I got.

amiehall

halifax are awful for that. when i opened my regular saver, they kept asking me about investments and "advised" me i'd be better off putting my money elsewhere.... i was horrified that they were trying to get me to invest even after i'd explained that i'm saving for my elective next summer and i'll need all the money then. i mean you can't invest for a year....

mr_fishbulb

They tried to sell this to me too. They asked what I was saving for and I told them a house deposit in a few years. Then they started going on about stockmarket investments - not the sort of thing for a short term investment!

savingpennies

Same here. I went to open the 10% RS and I was asked what I was saving for and whether I had an ISA. He started going on about S&S ISA's and that I might be better with a financial review. I told him I already had S&S ISA's and that I reviewed my own investments and I was quite happy with my choices as I did my own research. He looked a bit gob smacked and just opened the account for me.

Paul_Herring

large_satsuma wrote: »

I don't want to malign the Halifax unfairly. I wasn't pressured into anything. The lady's opening gambit was "Do you realise you won't make 10% on the whole sum invested?" - a legitimate warning.

And a completely wrong one. She clearly doesn't know what she's talking about.

Then she totted up the actual amount and said "That return on six grand? That's rubbish".

Well it would be if the whole £6K was in there for the whole year, but it isn't.

Then she started talking about my tax-free allowance. It all sounded quite sensible. But now I'm confused, because Martin's site actively promotes regular savers like Halifax's, and certainly doesn't give the impression that you'd be an idiot to prefer one to an investment ISA.

Which articles have you been reading? [STRIKE]It would appear you've missed[/STRIKE] Oh dear - it appears that Martin (or someone else) has removed the 'Savings Fountain' article - anyone know which, if any, article has replaced it? His first choice was IIRC cash ISA's then followed by high rate regular savers.

I realise it all depends on your attitude to risk. So my question is really: what's the least risky type of [strike]investment[/strike] ISA?

A cash one. At least in the short term.

YorkshireBoy

Paul_Herring wrote: »

Oh dear - it appears that Martin (or someone else) has removed the 'Savings Fountain' article - anyone know which, if any, article has replaced it?

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/which-saving-account#the

Paul_Herring

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/which-saving-account#the

Weird - that didn't come up for me on a search for 'savings fountain' either on the site search or google

large_satsuma

Thank you longTermLurker and others for your very comprehensible information. If 'knowing what you're doing' is a prerequisite for success with investments then I should definitely stick to cash ISAs and regular savers.

I did already know that stockmarket stuff is necessarily risky and should be considered longterm only - and also that one should never trust 'advice' from sales reps. But I'm also easily confused by a friendly and confident manner - and this particular lady had this in spades.

I'm now going to call her back about the 10% saver, not taking "They're rubbish" for an answer. If anyone tries to sideline me into an investment ISA, I'll say I'm not into risk. I'll report back how I get on.