Is this genuine? 'morgan stanley uk 6.8% easy access'

lisyloo

Had an email this morning (apply@ms-easyacess.co.uk).
Looks very feasible, has correct details and reference numbers.
link (removed by me) asks for contact details.

Does anyone have any info about this?
Doesn't feel right at all but very convincing.

refluxer

At not far-off twice the current best easy access rate, this is definitely a scam. The domain name for the site you posted was only registered yesterday, which is the second red-flag...

WHOIS search results

Domain name:

XXXX (URL removed in case anyone was tempted to look it up !)

Data validation:

Registrant contact details waiting to be checked

Registrar:

TUCOWS Inc t/a TUCOWS [Tag = TUCOWS-CA]

URL: https://www.tucowsdomains.com

Relevant dates:

Registered on: 18-May-2023

Expiry date: 18-May-2024

ColdIron

Obvious scam is obvious scam

adindas

lisyloo said:

Had an email this morning (apply@ms-easyacess.co.uk).
Looks very feasible, has correct details and reference numbers.
link (removed by me) asks for contact details.

Does anyone have any info about this?
Doesn't feel right at all but very convincing.

Are you sure the email is from Morgan Stanley ??

Typically the email from Morgan Stanley xxxx@morganstanley.com, not @ms-

You might want to call Morgan Stanley to clarify this

Is it common easy access saving or Regular saving Account. I highly doubt a bank could effort to pay an easy access saving, where they will allow you to put a large amount of money if the BoE base rate is 4.5% and InterBank rate is 4/69%.

jaypers

If something seems too good to be true, it always is. 

kaMelo

jaypers said:

If something seems too good to be true, it always is. 

Usually rather than always, as someone who benefited from the Hoover free flights to America, that was an offer too good to be true, yet it was true.

Back on topic, it's a scam.

Albermarle

The interest rate is over 50% higher than any other savings provider, so that is proof enough in itself that it is a scam.

lisyloo

Thanks for confirming, that was my gut feeling too.

refluxer

lisyloo said:

Thanks for confirming, that was my gut feeling too.

If you come across a situation like this again, the WHOIS domain name registration look-up site is a good way of doing a bit of homework on a suspicious-looking URL without actually needing to visit what could be a potentially malicious scam site.

https://who.is/

One dead-giveaway for scam sites is when they're claiming to be established companies but their domain names have only been recently registered.

Scammers can often spoof links in emails though (for example - a Barclays 'apply' image/button might actually lead you to a different site), in which case hovering a mouse-cursor over the link/button (etc) should reveal the actual URL (usually in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen). Not sure how this would work on a phone though.

Malthusian

adindas said:

Typically the email from Morgan Stanley xxxx@morganstanley.com, not @ms-

Any email from xxxx@morganstanley.com offering you 6.8% on easy access is also a scam. Addresses can be faked.

kaMelo said:

Usually rather than always, as someone who benefited from the Hoover free flights to America, that was an offer too good to be true, yet it was true.

Mmm. Except it wasn't true. Hence the scandal.

When Hoover's free flights promotion was launched to a wide-eyed British public in August 1992, it seemed too good to be true. Over the next 21 months, many Hoover customers discovered it was. BBC 2004

The point of the offer was that it was supposed to be too good to be true; the process to claim your tickets was so convoluted that Hoover calculated that very few customers would actually take it up. The trouble was that people started filing lawsuits to get their trip to America instead of giving up and forgetting about it, as most customers do with any kind of "free stuff / cashback / premium banking" promotion.
Exception that proves the rule. If the same promotion had been offered by a smaller company, it would simply have folded when the lawsuits came in and customers would have been left with just their crappy vacuum cleaner and no tickets to America.
A counter-example is Leonard vs PepsiCo Inc. Pepsi were offering various prizes in exchange for "Pepsi Points", including a Harrier jump jet in exchange for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. Points were usually given away with Pepsi cans but could also be bought directly from Pepsi for 10c each. A customer raised $700,000 and sent Pepsi a cheque for his fighter jet (value $37 million). Pepsi refused and the customer sued. The courts found against the customer on the grounds of "don't be silly". 
In this case Pepsi were offering a deal that was so clearly "too good to be true" that the courts decided they could not reasonably be expected to fulfil it. Hoover's deal was not "too good to be true" enough for them to completely wriggle out of it.
This illustrates that the exceptions to the "too good to be true" rule are so vanishingly rare it is not worth trying to look for them. (Finding one is not enough; you have to find a deal that is too good to be true enough to be worth pursuing it but not so too good to be true that it will bankrupt them or the courts will let them wriggle out of it.)

Bravepants

Sadly though, some poor soul out there will fall for this.