Shocked at annual interest on savings

kidmugsy

Birdynumnum wrote: »

Any advice greatly appreciated.

If you are so old that you are losing your marbles, I sympathise.

Otherwise I advise that you shed your absurd sense of entitlement.

The bank should have phoned you? Pah, is this all a tease?

Nick_C

jimjames wrote: »

Some people do that though and prefer pittance than hassle of moving money. I know someone with £170k in an account getting similar returns. I get more interest per month with £4k in tsb than they do on £170k.

I hope that's a joint account. Otherwise they are not fully covered by the FSCS if the bank goes bust.

Altarf

Birdynumnum wrote: »

I said given the difference in interest rates, some 1500% I would have thought it incumbent upon them to speak to me or perhaps write with a requirement that I sign something to say I was aware of the change as letters do get lost in the post.

You have fallen for the mistake of believing the bank's adverts, and that they have some morals.

They don't.

If they were able, they would draft their T&Cs to be able to take your first born and sell them into slavery.

But as you can see from the posts above, most people here are happy dealing with such organisations.

colsten

OP, to me it appears your first mistake was to put the money into a 1.5% account to start with. Since at the time, Santander paid 3% AER up to £20K, and a couple of years back you could get as many 123s as you wanted. So just 3 of them would have taken your original £48,200. You can still get 3% there but only on one account now. There were, and still are, various other similar accounts. Also, 2-3 years ago, you could still widely get some 3-4% on cash ISAs, so you could have got some of your interest tax free.

Your second mistake was that you did not read the summary information of the account you chose. If the interest rate included a bonus, which by the sounds of it it did, it would have specified this at the time.

Your third mistake was to make wrong assumptions on how cash interest rates work. The rate on the account you chose is variable, but for unknown reasons you assumed it would be fixed.

Based on just these three points, it seems fair to say that you are not too well informed about how interest for cash sums works. It's not compulsory to know about it but the information is, and has been, freely available to anyone who wants to get it. You should assume responsibility for your money rather than trying to blame somebody else for your decision not to research the offerings properly and not to keep an eye on rate changes.

colsten

Altarf wrote: »

You have fallen for the mistake of believing the bank's adverts, and that they have some morals.

The situation the OP finds themselves in has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with bank adverts and morals. The terms and interest rate information for all savings accounts are easy to read, and easy to find on the internet.

Birdynumnum

Well I wasn't looking for sympathy just advice but some of it seems rather scathing as if it's an offence not to be financially astute. I simply didn't realise that I would earn 15 times less interest in the following year and I would suggest that most people would also be surprised to find this.

That says much about how financially astute I am and indeed are many others and the banks use this to their advantage. Banks and financial institutions in general are sharks and I got what I deserved for splashing about in the water.

End of the day it's only £370 but I'd rather have it than give it to them.

PS - I rather like the nickname.

ViolaLass

Birdynumnum wrote: »

Banks and financial institutions in general are [STRIKE]sharks[/STRIKE] commercial institutions and I got what I deserved for splashing about in the water.

..........

masonic

Birdynumnum wrote: »

Well I wasn't looking for sympathy just advice but some of it seems rather scathing as if it's an offence not to be financially astute. I simply didn't realise that I would earn 15 times less interest in the following year and I would suggest that most people would also be surprised to find this.

It's quite unusual to end up here without at least browsing around the main site or signing up to the weekly email and MSE has been banging the drum about the need to switch savings accounts regularly to avoid ending up with poor interest tirelessly for the last decade or so. So, there tends to be an expectation that posters here would know at least that much. In that situation, going on to mention the possibility of getting compensation is likely to play on frustrations.

colsten

Birdynumnum wrote: »

End of the day it's only £370 but I'd rather have it than give it to them.

Did you even read what I posted? Never mind £370. You can, with a little bit of effort, presently make £720 after BR tax a year, from currently available accounts. That's almost twice as much than the amount you are crying over. You can make even more if you are prepared to put a bit more effort into it.

I am out of this thread now.

Snakey

Yeah, I reckon just about everyone gets caught like this the first time and that's how they learn, and a nice little earner for the banks in the meantime. Happened to me with an ISA about ten years ago, I did some research and picked the one with the best rate but, being (with hindsight) a bit of a simpleton in these matters, I just assumed that the reason it paid a reasonable interest rate was because it was an account that paid a reasonable interest rate and therefore was as good a place to keep my money as any.

I dread to think how long it was earning 0.01% before I spotted it, this was back in the days when you could expect 5% or whatever. I made a deliberate decision not to go back through my statements to find out, in the same way as I do not look at the lottery numbers for the weeks when I don't buy a ticket.

You cannot do anything about this - an introductory rate dropping to peanuts is a deliberate policy on the part of the banks so if you are hoping they will take pity on you because you didn't realise then forget it, they rely on people not realising. And while people on forums could often be nicer, a) this is the internet, and b) once you know that banks do this, then after a while you forget that you ever didn't know - especially if you hang out on a forum where it is common knowledge - and when someone comes along who still doesn't know... don't take it personally . (I actually quite like it because when I want advice I need people to tell it how it is. When I want tea and sympathy I go to friends and family.)