Wake up call to ditch Santander 123 current account

newlease

colsten wrote: »

Most of those that can afford to keep £20K in a 123 will in all likelihood already have Halifax and TSB and many other accounts that pay better than the 123. They also will not be pleased about the £60 annual charge. Unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you don't normally get to having lots of cash by not caring about the odd £60 here or there. Quite the contrary.

Your last sentence does not make sense.

I agree with the first part, I have 20K in a 123 and have Halifax, TSB, and the others and I am not pleased with the 60 annual charge.

It is not that I don't care about £60 (an extra £36 to what was previously £24), I very much do but this does not impact sufficiently the benefit to cause a change to leave the 123. That has been the previous commentary and in fact what you also are suggesting in your the first half of your comment.

The silver spoon comment is not really relevant, but since you bring it up, I would disagree with the greater premise- while it is true such people wouldn't care about £60, they also wouldn't be arsed putting 20k into 123 for 2.8%.

uzubairu

I was initially peeved by the increase to £5.
My 3 direct debits usually amount to approximately £2.75 (CTax, Mobile phone and Sky).

I've just added Gas, Electricity and BT and the cashback will be about £ 5.50 per month.
I've already got 9 current accounts providing savings duties, so have limited options for saving cash at a decent rate.
I'll be sticking with them. 😀

Carnival789

I'll be sticking with Santander for now but I've already got an exit plan lined up for when my savings have reduced to the right level.

Joint (bills) account will be going to Nat West and my sole account will probably be tarted around M&S and HSBC for switching bonuses (before ending up who knows where!).

It's been a great account for me over the past few years but there always comes a time to move on.

anoncol

We will be leaving to NatWest as well. Though we are still in profit for the account just from the cashback it's not as high as NatWest will be.

gingerdad

I've switched to HSBC and happy with the 20 extra per month from the isa. And using theirs and first direct regular savers to the max. Looking at keeping some cash in the TSB account. Don't have big savings so better for me than the 123 a/c

colsten

gingerdad wrote: »

I've switched to HSBC and happy with the 20 extra per month from the isa.

20 extra per month from the isa?

TheTracker

As much as I dislike this move by Santander I've crunched the numbers and it makes sense for me to continue to hold 2x 123's even with the fee increase (i.e. effective rate decrease). Someone once commented that Santander have locked themselves into 3% with the product title so the only avenue they have to increase takings is raise the monthly fee. I wonder if such ire would have been conveyed if they'd dropped the annual rate to say 2.5% and removed or retained the monthly fee.

alanwsg

TheTracker wrote: »

Someone once commented that Santander have locked themselves into 3% with the product title so the only avenue they have to increase takings is raise the monthly fee.

They could also decrease the maximum amount they pay interest on,
E.g. pay 3% on the first £10K in your account rather than £20K.
I'm quite surprised they haven't taken that route.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

Right last night I was a New Year party pooper and stayed indoors but my resolution for this year is basically to try and maximise getting my money working harder for me. I have a fair bit languishing in a couple of savings accounts I had forgotten about. One is with a Building Society that was taken over by another so I have located where I need to go to sort that. The other is a Nationwide passbook account with £7,500 in it.

So I so far have 2 x Tesco accounts with £6,000. I am going to create some extra Direct Debits in the frm of Tesco savings and paying the Water and TV by DD.

One quesion I have about the Halifax £5 reward - it says "pay" 2 or more DD's. So by this does that mean money must go out in the form of 2 DDs?

So my plan is from checking the MSE savings loophole article:

2 x Tesco £6,000 = £142 pa
1 x Halifax for £60 pa
1 x TSB = £78 pa
1 x FlexDirect = £98 pa
1 x Santander 123 = £435 pa with 20k and DD Cashback after £60 fee
1 x Bank of Scotland = £118 pa

So in theory I should get £931 pa interest or about £77 a month in wonga??

colsten

Why no Club Lloyds, why no Regular Savers?