Every Little Helps

teddysmum

I have a couple of Tesco Online savers ,used to catch interest from current accounts and open should I need a spare direct debit.


However today, I noticed that, opened a few months apart, they had different interest rates; the earliest 1% and the second 1.1%.


However ,on the banks information page it states the rate as 1.2% , 0.8% of which is a bonus for one year.


I'd had a letter saying that the first account was due to lose it's bonus, but rang up to query the situation, believing it was just a case of not updating the online account page, though I'd had no notification of changes in the (stated as variable) rate .


The lady explained that the bonus is fixed for the 12 months and the base rate is the variable part, but this puzzled me as there had been no rate change notified.


She said that if I opened to new ones today they would get the 1.2% as every now and then it is the fixed bonus offer which changes;adding that customers regularly close accounts and open new ones with a better bonus.


I knew you could have up to 6 such accounts, so asked what the situation was once you'd gone through your 6 ie was that the end of having a bonus, but she said as long as you only have 6 you can keep on opening and closing to get the best deals.


It's only a small difference between 1 and 1.2 ( 20p on £100), but as they say, 'Every little...'

soulsaver

I'm aware of above, but maybe plenty aren't... so:

Here's an additional tip: If you keep opening the new account to chase the best rate, you end up having to change your DDs over from the ones you're closing... So keep 2 (or 3 if necessary) acs dedicated for your DDs and use a 3rd 4th 5th etc to follow the interest, closing the old.
You can rename the DDs acs, too, so you can see which they are at a glance.

teddysmum

soulsaver wrote: »

I'm aware of above, but maybe plenty aren't... so:

Here's an additional tip: If you keep opening the new account to chase the best rate, you end up having to change your DDs over from the ones you're closing... So keep 2 (or 3 if necessary) acs dedicated for your DDs and use a 3rd 4th 5th etc to follow the interest, closing the old.
You can rename the DDs acs, too, so you can see which they are at a glance.

That's why I'm keeping no one open with 5p at the moment