NS&I Direct Saver

Growingold

With interest rates plummeting daily and accounts being withdrawn just a reminder the Direct Saver by NS&I is still paying 1% for a £1 balance

bowlhead99

Yes, the £1 balance for a year would pay you a whole penny of interest, which doesn't seem worth the hassle of setting up the account

For more meaningful amounts, if you are working with £500+ chunks of money, their Income Bonds are quite competitive, paying a better 1.16% .  (subject of another current thread)

wmb194

The thing to bear in mind with NS&I is that it has been known to close accounts to new customers but maintain them for existing so there is an argument to opening one with the minimum just to get your foot in the door.

Growingold

bowlhead99 said:

Yes, the £1 balance for a year would pay you a whole penny of interest, which doesn't seem worth the hassle of setting up the account

For more meaningful amounts, if you are working with £500+ chunks of money, their Income Bonds are quite competitive, paying a better 1.16% .  (subject of another current thread)

Yes the £1 balance would earn you 1p interest over the year at 1% but savers usually usually hope to have more than £1 in an account over the year.  There are some accounts that only pay 0.01%!!
Yes their  Income Bonds pay a better rate at 1.16% but these aren't for everybody as you have to have a minimum of £500 to open them and minimum withdrawal is £500 keeping a minimum of £500 in your account to keep it open.

harsh_but_fair

Speculation they may cut rates - only speculation of course.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/saving/article-8452059/NS-reveals-savers-cost-887m-year-borrowing-costs-low.html

(also posted in income bonds thread)

blue_max_3

harsh_but_fair said:

Speculation they may cut rates - only speculation of course.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/saving/article-8452059/NS-reveals-savers-cost-887m-year-borrowing-costs-low.html

(also posted in income bonds thread)

This is not good news for me. It finally felt good to have my funds in the one account without worrying about the bank failing. And having a relatively good interest rate. But at least they need to give two months notice.
I'll probably end up leaving it in, even if it reduces though. So much trouble to start again, chasing the better rates.

ackymitch

I'm more that a little surprised that NS&I is highly recommended by MSE when the level of customer satisfaction on Trust Pilot, from 87% of 424 customers, is poor/bad.

ColdIron

On my list of places to use when researching a financial product, Trustpilot would come close to the bottom

eskbanker

ackymitch said:

I'm more that a little surprised that NS&I is highly recommended by MSE when the level of customer satisfaction on Trust Pilot, from 87% of 424 customers, is poor/bad.

Where does MSE say that it's "highly recommended"?  I only see NS&I appearing on a factual list of interest rates, plus a clear statement at the foot of each page stating that "remember we focus on rates not service"....

blue_max_3

ackymitch said:

I'm more that a little surprised that NS&I is highly recommended by MSE when the level of customer satisfaction on Trust Pilot, from 87% of 424 customers, is poor/bad.

I hope I'll never need to contact them. Usually that would be because something had gone wrong. I wonder how many millions have never rang them up and are perfectly happy?

colsten

blue_max_3 said:

ackymitch said:

I'm more that a little surprised that NS&I is highly recommended by MSE when the level of customer satisfaction on Trust Pilot, from 87% of 424 customers, is poor/bad.

I hope I'll never need to contact them. Usually that would be because something had gone wrong. I wonder how many millions have never rang them up and are perfectly happy?

NS&I have 25 million customers (with £179 billion collective deposits)

424 is 0.001696% of 25 million. Some 24,999,576 customers don't appear to be particularly dissatisfied with NS&I. Not enough to complain on TrustPilot, anyway.

I had a quick look at the NS&I reviews on Trustpilot. Unsurprisingly, the quality of the reviews isn't particularly high, and a number of the reviewers don't appear to have bothered looking at the T&Cs. I eventually gave up after reading this 1-star rating & rant from an obvious glass-half-empty person.