The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

Molehusband

AndyTh_2 said:

Molehusband said:

soulsaver said:

Molehusband said:

soulsaver said:

I've had loads of Cynergy interest rate movement email notifications.

You get them for accounts you have, not for ones that you don't have.

I've had 12 Cynergy savings accounts of late. Today was the very first time I received an interest rate movement email (reference Easy Access Issue 53). All my other accounts never had even a single rate change. Instead, until now Cynergy always forced me to close & open a new account through Fastrack to get a rate change.

Please give some idea of these "loads of Cynergy interest rate movements" you've had. What accounts were they?

As said, if you haven't got the issue, you wouldn't be notified - so if you to closed earlier issues you wouldn't get rate change notifications on them.

So you prefer to keep open earlier issues which pay a poor rate of interest instead of putting all your money into the new issues paying better rates? That seems an unusual and curious way of operating savings accounts.

They didn't say they were keeping their money in those lower rate accounts, just that they kept them open.

How do you keep a savings account open with zero balance? The savings providers I use always demand a minimum balance be kept. Secondly, why is it necessary to keep old savings accounts open at all when you have a similar new better paying savings account with very the same bank (Cynergy in this case)? To me it makes more sense to put all your money into the single highest paying easy access account.

Nick_C

Plenty of providers allow you to keep savings accounts open with a zero balance.  TSB, Lloyds, Nationwide, Tesco, Chip, Virgin Money ....

AndyTh_2

Nick_C said:

Plenty of providers allow you to keep savings accounts open with a zero balance.  TSB, Lloyds, Nationwide, Tesco, Chip, Virgin Money ....

and £1 for convenience is hardly going to get much interest elsewhere. 

Molehusband

MiserlyMartin said:

infoadict said:

Just a heads up for those still waiting for the new money to show in the Cynergy Issue 53 or are about to open it, please take heed

I (and others) who had a previous Issue with Cynergy  kept it live so as to not have to keep setting up a new payee from their linked account each time a new Issue came up. Yesterday I opened the new Issue 53, and did an "Internal transfer and Close Account" transaction.. Then rushed to put a big chunk into the new account. - it didn't show.

Concerned, I dug deeper and found I had wrongly closed the Issue I had from my linked account. Thus have tried to pay into a non existent account. Cynergy say it can take up to 5 working days for this to bounce back.

It really does pay (pun intended) to keep an accurate record of the Issue account numbers, so others don't do as I have done

EDIT -  I've received a call from Cynergy and they are going to manually transfer the funds into the new Issue 53 for me - result!!

It's a very easy thing to do. Their website is clunky and not easy to use, easy to mix up the account numbers in just a drop down box. I withdrew money from their ISA into a savings account, when I had intended it to go into the new ISA with the better rate. I realised what I had done once you get to the account overview and called them straight away, but they said they cannot undo it. So that is ISA money from that tax year lost. They need account descriptions alongside the account number box and even a balance would help too, so you know which account its going from and to. Terrible website for that!!

I sympathise with you on the ISA problem you mention. Cynergy's practice of obliging customers to repeatedly close old / open new accounts to get a better rate is an absolute pain especially when it comes to ISA's. Their very rudimentary system of transferring to a new account without clearly indicating if it's an ISA, has frequently worried me. Fortunately so far I haven't suffered the misfortune of losing my ISA benefits. Did you raise a formal complaint?

I hope the Issue 53 savings events of the last few days may pave the way for improved customer experience by being able to benefit from better interests rates without the hassle of constantly needing to open new accounts.

Molehusband

Nick_C said:

Plenty of providers allow you to keep savings accounts open with a zero balance.  TSB, Lloyds, Nationwide, Tesco, Chip, Virgin Money ....

I repeat why is it necessary to keep lots of defunct accounts open when all you need is one single easy access account with the very same provider (in this case Cynergy) to hold your money?

SJMALBA

Charter Savings Bank EA Issue 27 - 1.75% (5k min.)

https://chartersavingsbank.co.uk/Products/EasyAccess

uptdale

Molehusband said:

Nick_C said:

Plenty of providers allow you to keep savings accounts open with a zero balance.  TSB, Lloyds, Nationwide, Tesco, Chip, Virgin Money ....

I repeat why is it necessary to keep lots of defunct accounts open when all you need is one single easy access account with the very same provider (in this case Cynergy) to hold your money?

I think AndyTh_2 gave 3 possible reasons in his reply about an hour ago.  (The third answer would only require one defunct account kept open.  The first two answers are tax reasons which will not be relevant to everyone.)

MiserlyMartin

Molehusband said:

I sympathise with you on the ISA problem you mention. Cynergy's practice of obliging customers to repeatedly close old / open new accounts to get a better rate is an absolute pain especially when it comes to ISA's. Their very rudimentary system of transferring to a new account without clearly indicating if it's an ISA, has frequently worried me. Fortunately so far I haven't suffered the misfortune of losing my ISA benefits. Did you raise a formal complaint?

I hope the Issue 53 savings events of the last few days may pave the way for improved customer experience by being able to benefit from better interests rates without the hassle of constantly needing to open new accounts.

I did, yes. Also what made it worse was that I ended up with 3 ISAs opened not one and 3 savings accounts when I opened one due to some system error, so that made it even more confusing which account number was what.

Molehusband

MiserlyMartin said:

Molehusband said:

I sympathise with you on the ISA problem you mention. Cynergy's practice of obliging customers to repeatedly close old / open new accounts to get a better rate is an absolute pain especially when it comes to ISA's. Their very rudimentary system of transferring to a new account without clearly indicating if it's an ISA, has frequently worried me. Fortunately so far I haven't suffered the misfortune of losing my ISA benefits. Did you raise a formal complaint?

I hope the Issue 53 savings events of the last few days may pave the way for improved customer experience by being able to benefit from better interests rates without the hassle of constantly needing to open new accounts.

I did, yes. Also what made it worse was that I ended up with 3 ISAs opened not one and 3 savings accounts when I opened one due to some system error, so that made it even more confusing which account number was what.

Ah, I think I had the very same issue a month or so ago when Cynergy introduced a new better paying ISA. I went through the usual Fastrack pantomime to open a new one but nothing happened. Some time later I repeated it and once again new new ISA appeared. Yes, after struggling some hours I ended up with 3 or 4 new ISA accounts. I finally got my old ISA transferred into one of them, but then for the following few weeks I was bombarded with emails saying I needed to put money into the other ones. Staff said there was nothing they could do and it took the best part of a month before the defunct empty ISAs finally vanished! It has made me wonder if I might be penalised for opening a few ISAs without funding them.

Molehusband

AndyTh_2 said:

Molehusband said:

soulsaver said:

Molehusband said:

soulsaver said:

I've had loads of Cynergy interest rate movement email notifications.

You get them for accounts you have, not for ones that you don't have.

I've had 12 Cynergy savings accounts of late. Today was the very first time I received an interest rate movement email (reference Easy Access Issue 53). All my other accounts never had even a single rate change. Instead, until now Cynergy always forced me to close & open a new account through Fastrack to get a rate change.

Please give some idea of these "loads of Cynergy interest rate movements" you've had. What accounts were they?

As said, if you haven't got the issue, you wouldn't be notified - so if you to closed earlier issues you wouldn't get rate change notifications on them.

So you prefer to keep open earlier issues which pay a poor rate of interest instead of putting all your money into the new issues paying better rates? That seems an unusual and curious way of operating savings accounts.

They didn't say they were keeping their money in those lower rate accounts, just that they kept them open.

 It's actually useful if you were going over the Personal Savings Allowance, since its annual interest, keeping the account open will mean you delay the taxable event till when you want it.

However it does mean you're not getting interest on your interest by delaying the closure.

Also a valid scenario is keeping one open for the pay in account (to then do an internal transfer to the high rate account), as every time a new issue was added, changing the payee from your source bank account gets re-evaluated for fraud conditions as new payees.

The issue was specifically regarding only Cynergy who recently started opening new better paying accounts around every week or so. I too went through the regular Fastrack pantomime. Since each account was only open for a week or 2, the interest accruing would be minimal, so I doubt tax date would be an issue.
Yes, I fully agree that to keep a single defunct account open can be useful for the reason you mention. It's the apparent truckload of defunct accounts (all with Cynergy) which was the reason for my query.