Smile Student Account

disguise

I had a look at this for my daughters.
http://www.smile.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Smile/Page/smView&c=Page&cid=971088187602

£1000 0% interest in the 1st year increasing to £2000 over the years also it pays 3.04% interest monthly. The account is easy to set up and use online also you can use any branch of the Co-Op bank.

S0rin

I have had this account for nearly 2 years now, all done online and haven't had to to visit a branch once.

Never had any problems and there customer service using the "secure messages" function is great, usually get a response within a couple of hours.

Not had a single piece of crap sent to me through the post / email either about trying to upgrade / open any of there other products too which is nice.

Overall cannot fault it at all.

lee__48

I too have had this account for a few years. The only downside is a year after you graduate the student account is replaced with a standard Current Account with an overdraft of just £500. If you have the maximum overdraft in your 4th year this would leave you with £1500 to pay back in that year. Other banks have Graduate Accounts where the overdraft is slowly reduced over 3-4 years.

Lee

zar

Once you have graduated you could easily open a graduate account with another bank (I remember Natwest offering you incentives to do so in a leaflet that came with the graduation pack) and use the I/F overdraft with that, reducing it gradually over 3 years, whilst still using smile for your day-to-day stuff - you shouldn't be breaking any terms and conditions as you would still only have one graduate account, whereas most of the banks say you can't have a student or graduate account with another bank as well as them.

My husband started off with Natwest's student account but we opened a normal smile account last year whilst still using the last £500 I/F part of the natwest 3 year old graduate account - so basically earning smile interest on natwest's money. I have to confess to still doing this now with my HSBC student account - I'm almost always overdrawn despite having plenty in savings. :whistle:

DrFluffy

zar wrote:

Once you have graduated you could easily open a graduate account with another bank (I remember Natwest offering you incentives to do so in a leaflet that came with the graduation pack) and use the I/F overdraft with that, reducing it gradually over 3 years, whilst still using smile for your day-to-day stuff - you shouldn't be breaking any terms and conditions as you would still only have one graduate account, whereas most of the banks say you can't have a student or graduate account with another bank as well as them.

How would that work - you would get the £500 standard, not the slow lowering that you get if you've had a student account converted...

It's one thing when you have savings, but quite another when you do not, and have no means to cover your OD...

zar

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, only just seen this. Obviously I don't know what the banks will decide to do in 3 years time, but Martin does a fantastic review of all the graduate bank accounts as well as the student ones each year. - see here and particularly the comparison table here. For example if you had just graduated this year you could open a Lloyds TSB account and get a £2000 overdraft this year, followed by a £1500 next year and £1000 the year after, but you'd have to be paying your salary in. The banks are probably even keener to get you to switch to them as a graduate then to get you as a student, as you'll actually be earning money (supposedly lots of it :rolleyes: ) so you should be able to get the same terms if you switch when you graduate as you do when a student account rolls-over into a graduate one.