The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

s71hj

Is launching a highly lucrative app only account and almost immediately closing the app for maintenance a regular saver variation on the dead cat strategy in politics. Get yourself noticed and hold that attention in a... kind of irritating but compelling way. Sort of a combination of this and the "!!!!!! teaser" in popular culture 

clairec666

jameseonline said:
I don't fund regular saver accounts with a pathetic £1 & leave them alone, if I get a regular saver I fully fund EVERY month, then close if I need to free up funds.

Might be worth changing your stance about fully funding. If you can't put the full £1000 into the new Monmouthshire, it's still worth putting in, say, £200 per month. And at a higher rate than Nationwide for example.
I doubt I'll be able to put in £1000 most months, even with dropping lower rate accounts, so I'll start with £100 this month and only add more if it's not too much hassle.

Kim_13

It does seem a very bad move to have done a Skipton (and Dudley) in terms of the eligibility criteria being to have been a member since the day before the account launched. As they launched the open to all version first, it was only ever going to lead to a repeat in that Monmouthshire were overwhelmed with applications then, and all of those people will by default be eligible for the new 7% version (unless they gave up in the process of trying to open the 6% RS.) And unless savers have a lot of spare funds, many recently opened accounts will not now be seeing any use as they are ditched for the Exclusive version. 

gt94sss2

masonic said:

BestSeagull said:

Just catching up with the MonBS news. Is the feeling that the system maintenance message is because of system overload rather than actual maintenance and when things calm down later on, it might work then?

Originally it was just an intermittent issue, so probably overload. Suspect they may have taken it down at the end of the day as a precaution, given the way things were going.

The Android app has of the order 1000 total downloads. I guess iOS will be of the same order. Only a fraction will be active users. It's hard to believe there is a persistent volume of customers pounding on it unsuccessfully for hours on end. Most would give up fairly quickly.

While the Android app has been updated so that the 2FA issue has been fixed, I suspect it has introduced new issues which have increased the load on their servers 

For instance, if you change focus from the MonBS app to something else and then switch back, you are forced to login again..

ForumUser7

subjecttocontract said:

Is it worth trying the App at say silly o clock, around 3am, when most people will have given up and gone to bed ?

No joy unfortunately

trickydicky14

Well 7am and still no joy with the Monmouth app. If it hadn't been such a good deal I think I would have walked by now. Let's see what today brings.

Chaykin

MonBS: I'm one of those that managed to open the 6% RS Issue 8 with the app no problem, and funded it in July & August without issues too. The only persistent hassle was a double SMS code in order to log-in.

Tried to open the (automatically updated) app this morning to open the new shiny 7%-er but all I get now is "We are undergoing system maintenance." straight away after opening the app.

clairec666

Kim_13 said:

It does seem a very bad move to have done a Skipton (and Dudley) in terms of the eligibility criteria being to have been a member since the day before the account launched. As they launched the open to all version first, it was only ever going to lead to a repeat in that Monmouthshire were overwhelmed with applications then, and all of those people will by default be eligible for the new 7% version (unless they gave up in the process of trying to open the 6% RS.) And unless savers have a lot of spare funds, many recently opened accounts will not now be seeing any use as they are ditched for the Exclusive version. 

I am unlikely to be able to fund the 6% account for a couple of months at least, now that the 7% account has come along. If they wanted to reward truly loyal customers they should have specified an earlier cut off date for membership, i.e. before the 6% account became available.
Oh well, shouldn't criticise as I'm getting a pretty good deal here!

BestSeagull

MonBS I was hoping they would switch the app back on before 9am to save a deluge of calls but looks like that's not going to happen!

CricketLady

To answer a few questions in this thread regarding Monmouthshire BS 7% at £1000 per month funding - I wrote everything down as I read it to save me future confusion...

I managed to open this last night after simply being patient, pressing to open the app every ten minutes or so while Mr Cricket and I watched some t.v. and eventually I was lucky and got the account number, sort code AND my own personal reference with also the instruction that the payee was my full name (as opposed to "Mon BS", as sometimes this can cause confusion.)

Funded it immediately as I've never had a problem with Monmouthshire, can't check if the cash is there yet as it has gone back to "undergoing system maintenance" but the fact that it let me log on and do everything I needed to do between all these messages last night (8pm?) indicates it is just an overload of the system, so simply keep trying.

It said that the maturity date would be 12 months from date of opening.  It gave a projected figure (if variable rate remained unchanged, obviously and £1000 paid in each month) of £12453.95 which would put to rest the fears of the £1000 being a typo.

It said the minimum payment was £0 indicating that months could be missed, and that it offered penalty free withdrawals.

I also looked to see whether I could still have this one as well as the 6% one I opened in July and I felt reassured that I could but I can't remember the exact wording, I could be wrong on that front but the accounts were both showing side by side in my app last night (wasn't expecting the £1000 in the 7% account to be showing until today.)  Oh - edited to add - it said that one issue of each regular saver was allowed, so Chaykin, as your post points out that the 6% July one was Issue 8, and this 7% seems to be Issue 1, I bet that's where I got that from.

Hope this helps xxx