Best "burner" account?

GoodCredit

MikeJXE said:

GoodCredit said:

Thank you all for your replies and links. 
Ill have a read through.
Personally, I was only planning on opening up one burner account and switching it a couple/few times (or however many incentives are around at the time) just as an extra bit of money to shove into my savings

One burner account won't do the job, when you switch it it's gone to the switch bank and closed so you need another for the next switch. 

If you are going to do switching you need as many burner accounts as there are switch incentives

I started last December and have now 10 accounts in total 

I was planning on just switching the same one, say Chase to Lloyd's, then Lloyd's to whatever has an incentive. And so on.
I thought that after you've switched one account you wouldn't get more incentives for the same name? 
How many burners did you open and switch and across what time frame?

PRAISETHESUN

GoodCredit said:

MikeJXE said:

GoodCredit said:

Thank you all for your replies and links. 
Ill have a read through.
Personally, I was only planning on opening up one burner account and switching it a couple/few times (or however many incentives are around at the time) just as an extra bit of money to shove into my savings

One burner account won't do the job, when you switch it it's gone to the switch bank and closed so you need another for the next switch. 

If you are going to do switching you need as many burner accounts as there are switch incentives

I started last December and have now 10 accounts in total 

I was planning on just switching the same one, say Chase to Lloyd's, then Lloyd's to whatever has an incentive. And so on.
I thought that after you've switched one account you wouldn't get more incentives for the same name? 
How many burners did you open and switch and across what time frame?

Serial switching is fine, but there are reasons it might not work. For one, multiple switches might pop up at the same time and you might not want to wait until the first pays out to move onto the second - Lloyds is the exception to the rule, most switches take a fair while (think a month or two, longest I've seen was up to 12 months!) to pay out and you could end up waiting so long the other offer gets taken down. Alternatively, you might just find you actually want to retain the new account (eg. you like the monthly Club Lloyds benefits). In those kinds of cases having multiple donors is a good idea. I usually try to keep at least 2.

GoodCredit

Katiehound said:

MikeJXE said:

GoodCredit said:

Thank you all for your replies and links. 
Ill have a read through.
Personally, I was only planning on opening up one burner account and switching it a couple/few times (or however many incentives are around at the time) just as an extra bit of money to shove into my savings

One burner account won't do the job, when you switch it it's gone to the switch bank and closed so you need another for the next switch. 

If you are going to do switching you need as many burner accounts as there are switch incentives

I started last December and have now 10 accounts in total 

I would suggest having a couple of donor accounts. They can both then have linear switch deals ie. switch account 1 and stay for a few months (maybe even a year) then switch to a new account. Do the same thing with account 2.

Sometimes the new account offers very good perks, especially for the first year- interest, RS saver or an extra payment after some months. If you stay that or a similar length of time you won't upset them either!
The other way to do this is to switch to a new account, enjoy the benefits, open a donor account there......(just one, not a clutch)

I was intending on just switching the one account and reusing this one account over and over. I didn't realise you could do it for multiple accounts.
Is there some kind of negative to doing this? (Other than hard search on credit file)
I just don't understand how it's possible for banks to repeatedly pay out for the same person to keep switching between incentives?

Katiehound

You might get more incentives... but not for a while hence the need to study the date line that most of these offers have.

I am just looking at one switch' trail' that I had
Halifax Reward- had had it for years-to
  Yorks Bank Nov 17--
  NatWest Feb 18----
  Barclays May 18- (at that time Blue Rewards were worth having)
switched Tesco a/c into existing Barclays (the one above) summer 19
then Barclays went?? to existing Nationwide
I didn't immediately switch because Barclays turned out to be quite lucrative.
 

eskbanker

GoodCredit said:
I just don't understand how it's possible for banks to repeatedly pay out for the same person to keep switching between incentives?

Just to be clear, nobody's suggesting that any one bank will pay multiple incentives to the same person (such loopholes don't generally exist anymore), just that you can do the rounds of all of them and having multiple burner accounts would help you do so faster.

Rob5342

GoodCredit said:

Katiehound said:

MikeJXE said:

GoodCredit said:

Thank you all for your replies and links. 
Ill have a read through.
Personally, I was only planning on opening up one burner account and switching it a couple/few times (or however many incentives are around at the time) just as an extra bit of money to shove into my savings

One burner account won't do the job, when you switch it it's gone to the switch bank and closed so you need another for the next switch. 

If you are going to do switching you need as many burner accounts as there are switch incentives

I started last December and have now 10 accounts in total 

I would suggest having a couple of donor accounts. They can both then have linear switch deals ie. switch account 1 and stay for a few months (maybe even a year) then switch to a new account. Do the same thing with account 2.

Sometimes the new account offers very good perks, especially for the first year- interest, RS saver or an extra payment after some months. If you stay that or a similar length of time you won't upset them either!
The other way to do this is to switch to a new account, enjoy the benefits, open a donor account there......(just one, not a clutch)

I just don't understand how it's possible for banks to repeatedly pay out for the same person to keep switching between incentives?

There is normally a restriction on how often you can do it, with Nationwide for example you can't get the incentive if you've had a switch offer from them since 18th August 2021. A bank isn't obliged to give you can account either, they can refuse if they feel like it.

Also, although switching is promoted a lot on here, in "real life" I don't expect many people switch that often. Most peope I know have been with their bank for years and baulk at the mere suggestion of switching without even a cursory look at the alternatives.

MikeJXE

GoodCredit said:

MikeJXE said:

GoodCredit said:

Thank you all for your replies and links. 
Ill have a read through.
Personally, I was only planning on opening up one burner account and switching it a couple/few times (or however many incentives are around at the time) just as an extra bit of money to shove into my savings

One burner account won't do the job, when you switch it it's gone to the switch bank and closed so you need another for the next switch. 

If you are going to do switching you need as many burner accounts as there are switch incentives

I started last December and have now 10 accounts in total 

I was planning on just switching the same one, say Chase to Lloyd's, then Lloyd's to whatever has an incentive. And so on.
I thought that after you've switched one account you wouldn't get more incentives for the same name? 
How many burners did you open and switch and across what time frame?

I started switching 2nd December 2022 and over the next couple of weeks there were 4 separate incentives going so I opened 4 burner accounts

There were then more incentives available and some were slow so I needed more burners

When NatWest RBS and Ulster came up I had to open another burner to cope, I applied for all 3 between 12th and 16th January 

Between 2nd December and 25th May I collected £1775.00 

I have now applied for 2 direct debits for my spare Metro account and Nationwide £200 is my target 

The TSB £75 from February switch should be paid next month 

Further to this I am registered with Yougov Fiancé so I can add £50 May 26th £50 August 2nd and another £50 should be available tomorrow 

For what time all this takes it must be a very high hourly rate 

I wouldn't be doing this as much if I needed a mortgage or credit finance

I suspect I will not be eligible for further switching for  a couple of years maybe 

eskbanker

Rob5342 said:
Also, although switching is promoted a lot on here, in "real life" I don't expect many people switch that often. Most peope I know have been with their bank for years and baulk at the mere suggestion of switching without even a cursory look at the alternatives.

Indeed, the CASS statistics show that annual switch volumes represent no more than about 1-2% of accounts.

MikeJXE

eskbanker said:

Rob5342 said:
Also, although switching is promoted a lot on here, in "real life" I don't expect many people switch that often. Most peope I know have been with their bank for years and baulk at the mere suggestion of switching without even a cursory look at the alternatives.

Indeed, the CASS statistics show that annual switch volumes represent no more than about 1-2% of accounts.

That was me before MSE, I'm 82 and was a one bank account person for ever until I got hooked 

GoodCredit

Thank you all for your replies. This post alone has been a great help. I think I'm going to start off with just the one burner, then once I've done the switch then I'll go onto another burner for other incentives. Seems worth the time for a few hundred extra quid that I could definitely make use of!