Incentives to Switch Bank

Zanderman

RG2015 wrote: »

Thanks again Zanderman but I cannot change the way I feel. It is a bit like the tax avoidance debate. Different people draw the line in different places.

For me a bribe involves payment of money. Hence a switching fee is a bribe and a generous interest rate is not. But this is just my point of view. I am neither being judgmental nor attempting to persuade others.

This has been a good discussion and I have learned a lot but however erudite your argument I cannot change my opinion. :beer:

I don't understand why you can't see that the introductory and extraordinarily generous interest rate is a bribe. What else would it be???

But if you can't see that we'll have to agree to differ!

bigadaj

RG2015 wrote: »

Thanks again Zanderman but I cannot change the way I feel. It is a bit like the tax avoidance debate. Different people draw the line in different places.

For me a bribe involves payment of money. Hence a switching fee is a bribe and a generous interest rate is not. But this is just my point of view. I am neither being judgmental nor attempting to persuade others.

This has been a good discussion and I have learned a lot but however erudite your argument I cannot change my opinion. :beer:

Hopefully you don't currently have any involvement with the 2010 bribery and corruption act as your position wouldn't stand up in court, it's the same thing.

RG2015

Zanderman wrote: »

I don't understand why you can't see that the introductory and extraordinarily generous interest rate is a bribe. What else would it be???

But if you can't see that we'll have to agree to differ!

bigadaj wrote: »

Hopefully you don't currently have any involvement with the 2010 bribery and corruption act as your position wouldn't stand up in court, it's the same thing.

Okay, I give in. They're all bribes. Just don't take me to court! :rotfl:

Curls2208

This has been an interesting read. I don't understand how anyone at all can find this morally wrong. As Hot Chocolate once said, Everyone's a winner baby.

RG2015

Okay, I'm going to climb down a bit on this one.

If you are genuinely switching your main bank or one that you regularly use then the cash incentive is acceptable to me.

If, on the other hand you are opening sacrificial bank accounts that you are never going to use purely to switch from them to get the fee then I do not find this acceptable.

Zanderman

RG2015 wrote: »

Okay, I'm going to climb down a bit on this one.

If you are genuinely switching your main bank or one that you regularly use then the cash incentive is acceptable to me.

If, on the other hand you are opening sacrificial bank accounts that you are never going to use purely to switch from them to get the fee then I do not find this acceptable.

Thanks for climbing down a bit! I agree, to some extent, that there can be an argument against opening bank accounts you don't actually need or use just for incentives. But only to some extent.

Out of curiosity, do you use your NWide FlexDirect as a main account or just for the interest?

RG2015

Zanderman wrote: »

Out of curiosity, do you use your NWide FlexDirect as a main account or just for the interest?

I claim the fifth.

Jeems

RG2015 wrote: »

Thank you for your reply but I really have no wish to claim a payment from anyone for doing nothing. The purpose of the thread is to see views of others and I think that I am getting a quite decisive answer.
No one pays me any money for downloading an app and they usually bombard me with advertising so I am not really using it for free.

A decent app can cost hundreds of thousands to build. If you download it for free and dont click their adverts or purchase in app, then they are making a loss on you. However there will be enough users (or in this case, bank customers) who do make purchases (or in this scenario, open credit cards, or other fee paying products eg mortgages) to more than cover the cost of paying you a switch incentive. So imo there is no need to feel guilty.

Katiehound

I want to point out that sometimes I have opened a bank a/c simply to earn the interest. However now I'm thinking of TSB- then they lured me in to use my debit card contactless until that scheme ended Dec 16. After that they offered me a CC with cashback. I didn't need another CC- but there was an incentive.
So in the end I did use my bank account, quite a lot!

Similarly Nationwide also offered me a CC with very minimal cashback, but cashback nevertheless so when TSB deal ends sometime next year the Nationwide CCwill be in use. (And no, card providers don't make money out of me because I pay it back in full each month!!)

Zanderman

Katiehound wrote: »

Similarly Nationwide also offered me a CC with very minimal cashback, but cashback nevertheless so when TSB deal ends sometime next year the Nationwide CCwill be in use. (And no, card providers don't make money out of me because I pay it back in full each month!!)

You may pay back in full but the bank still makes money out of your use of the card - the retailer pays a fee every time you use it. And the bank's CC fees are, iirc, higher than debit card fees.

(NWide CC cashback has, btw, just been reduced again, at least for my card, so NWide are keeping more per transaction)