The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

Bobblehat

Bridlington1's experience is not the only example on the forum of consequences of "testing" the T&C's of accounts. The examples are not easy to find using current search facilities of the forum, as they are well scattered, but they are out there!

My reaction to reading tales of "I got away with it", is .... "Would I want to encourage others to do it"? The answer is "No, I wouldn't, but you go ahead if you want to"!

I wouldn't go as far as saying to anyone don't do it .... just, is it really worth the risk? There are so many accounts to choose from out there to achieve a similar goal, and little tweaks that can be made sticking within the T&C's, why risk breaking any clear rules.

I'll admit there are all too frequent grey areas where the T&C's are not 100% clear. I guess we are back to Dirty Harry there ... so good luck if you want to test them!

clairec666

Bobblehat said:

Bridlington1's experience is not the only example on the forum of consequences of "testing" the T&C's of accounts. The examples are not easy to find using current search facilities of the forum, as they are well scattered, but they are out there!

My reaction to reading tales of "I got away with it", is .... "Would I want to encourage others to do it"? The answer is "No, I wouldn't, but you go ahead if you want to"!

I wouldn't go as far as saying to anyone don't do it .... just, is it really worth the risk? There are so many accounts to choose from out there to achieve a similar goal, and little tweaks that can be made sticking within the T&C's, why risk breaking any clear rules.

I'll admit there are all too frequent grey areas where the T&C's are not 100% clear. I guess we are back to Dirty Harry there ... so good luck if you want to test them!

Also I guess it's not worth pushing the boundaries if you've got a credit card with the same bank - I've got a nice cushty 0% for 20 months from Natwest, and I guess if I irked them with misuse of the regular saver they could turf me out and I'd have to pay off the credit card in one go.

Bridlington1

clairec666 said:

Bridlington1 said:

Born2Save_3 said:

Bobblehat said:

So am I right in thinking that looking at the messages above, we should ignore the T&C's and play roulette with the deposits?

A line from the Dirty Harry movie comes to mind .... guess which one :-)

So far, to the best of my knowledge, when caught, no organisation has been particularly harsh, yet !  For example, declining or withholding interest or imposing penalties on capital, severing or limiting relationship, or what other possibilities may there be ?  Beginning to sound like the actions of HMRC now...

In the case of LBG it didn't end well for me when I took the Michael so I'd be cautious of going too far:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6433933/lbg-closing-all-my-accounts-on-18th-may/p1

Wow.... I never thought any of my banking exploits could get me banned. Without reading the full 32 pages of that thread, did you ever get a reason for them closing your accounts?

As for "being a profitable customer", I reckon I'm particularly unprofitable to all of the 18 banks and building societies I use, because most of the accounts I hold are high-paying regular savers.

I never got an explanation in the end so all I can offer is my best guess, which is that I used LBG as a source of short-lived donor accounts for switching offers, then I opened some more current accounts and savings accounts with them at the time YouGov were offering £5 per current account and £1 per savings account you linked to them with no limit on the number of accounts you could link to them.

I listed my account opening history on page 6 of the thread:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79934222/#Comment_79934222

The above is also primarily why I've consistently advised against using Chase (or indeed any one bank) to open several donor accounts for switching offers.

Bobblehat said:

Bridlington1's experience is not the only example on the forum of consequences of "testing" the T&C's of accounts. The examples are not easy to find using current search facilities of the forum, as they are well scattered, but they are out there!

My reaction to reading tales of "I got away with it", is .... "Would I want to encourage others to do it"? The answer is "No, I wouldn't, but you go ahead if you want to"!

I wouldn't go as far as saying to anyone don't do it .... just, is it really worth the risk? There are so many accounts to choose from out there to achieve a similar goal, and little tweaks that can be made sticking within the T&C's, why risk breaking any clear rules.

I'll admit there are all too frequent grey areas where the T&C's are not 100% clear. I guess we are back to Dirty Harry there ... so good luck if you want to test them!

I take the approach that it's up to the individual to decide how far they wish to go, the line isn't always the clearest. I do occasionally re-raise the LBG thread for the sake of balance, though I generally prefer to remain quite laissez faire when it comes to such discussions.

There's been many instances where I've refrained from breaching the Ts&Cs when I could've got away with it, including many methods which I haven't seen mentioned on this forum, and which I shan't mention myself. I have been known to manipulate building society links, though to date the vast majority of cases of me doing this has been to recover NLA regular saver Ts&Cs for the sake of the archived thread (thanks to Leeds BS, Coventry, Virgin and the many others who are rather slow at pulling your regular saver Ts&Cs links from your websites).

So far as the first page of this thread goes, I simply state the terms, where terms aren't clear I generally interpret them in the way that is most beneficial to the customer whilst still being a reasonable interpretation of the terms, being mindful of the FCA's fair, clear and not misleading rule, which I and many others have benefitted from so often in the past (notably with Co-op's £125 RAF offer (long running thread exists on it), Saffron BS's Refer-a-friend RS, Monmouthshire BS's regular savers in 2023-4 among several others).

Ed-1

masonic said:

clairec666 said:

Bridlington1 said:

Born2Save_3 said:

Bobblehat said:

So am I right in thinking that looking at the messages above, we should ignore the T&C's and play roulette with the deposits?

A line from the Dirty Harry movie comes to mind .... guess which one :-)

So far, to the best of my knowledge, when caught, no organisation has been particularly harsh, yet !  For example, declining or withholding interest or imposing penalties on capital, severing or limiting relationship, or what other possibilities may there be ?  Beginning to sound like the actions of HMRC now...

In the case of LBG it didn't end well for me when I took the Michael so I'd be cautious of going too far:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6433933/lbg-closing-all-my-accounts-on-18th-may/p1

Wow.... I never thought any of my banking exploits could get me banned. Without reading the full 32 pages of that thread, did you ever get a reason for them closing your accounts?

As for "being a profitable customer", I reckon I'm particularly unprofitable to all of the 18 banks and building societies I use, because most of the accounts I hold are high-paying regular savers.

Bridlington isn't alone in having facilities removed. It has happened to others. Ultimately something a bank or banking group can do without entitling you to an explanation. Something in practice they will only do to those pushing the boundaries. So it pays to moderate ones behaviour somewhat.

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/new-de-banking-rules-to-protect-customers-from-unfair-closures-aj41N3q2of43

Bigwheels1111

Born2Save_3 said:

MHBS Fixed Term Regular Savers Overfunding

They're enforcing the rules this month.  My second account £250 funding returned :

01/09/2025

Clrd Sav Rcpt

Standing Order xxxxxxxxxxx

£250.00

02/09/2025

Sav Return S/O

Standing Order Restricted

-£250.00

Credited to my current account today 3/9/25.

That's not good.

Both mine went in and have credited this month, I hop they leave it for 2 more payments.

Fingers crossed.

jameseonline

Just checked my CBS app it seems my Sunny Day has been converted to Easy Access 7 but the amount is 2p less than the amount given in letter, hmm, I know the guy on the chat said it gets converted at 12am but yeah 2p less & already converted, I'm a bit confused.

So at the moment I have £1859.27 showing in Easy Access 7, guess I'll see if 2p gets added at 12am yea?🤔

saverkev

jameseonline said:

Just checked my CBS app it seems my Sunny Day has been converted to Easy Access 7 but the amount is 2p less than the amount given in letter, hmm, I know the guy on the chat said it gets converted at 12am but yeah 2p less & already converted, I'm a bit confused.

So at the moment I have £1859.27 showing in Easy Access 7, guess I'll see if 2p gets added at 12am yea?🤔

Coventry Sunny Day 

Just checked mine - its converted to Easy Access Saver £2009.20 - withdrawal instruction given to pay into nominated bank tomorrow - don't know what the amount on the letter said as its been filed in the shredder.

Born2Save_3

Bigwheels1111 said:

Born2Save_3 said:

MHBS Fixed Term Regular Savers Overfunding

They're enforcing the rules this month.  My second account £250 funding returned :

01/09/2025

Clrd Sav Rcpt

Standing Order xxxxxxxxxxx

£250.00

02/09/2025

Sav Return S/O

Standing Order Restricted

-£250.00

Credited to my current account today 3/9/25.

That's not good.

Both mine went in and have credited this month, I hop they leave it for 2 more payments.

Fingers crossed.

Did they close some of your accounts and/or return money to you recently ? 

jameseonline

saverkev said:

jameseonline said:

Just checked my CBS app it seems my Sunny Day has been converted to Easy Access 7 but the amount is 2p less than the amount given in letter, hmm, I know the guy on the chat said it gets converted at 12am but yeah 2p less & already converted, I'm a bit confused.

So at the moment I have £1859.27 showing in Easy Access 7, guess I'll see if 2p gets added at 12am yea?🤔

Coventry Sunny Day 

Just checked mine - its converted to Easy Access Saver £2009.20 - withdrawal instruction given to pay into nominated bank tomorrow - don't know what the amount on the letter said as its been filed in the shredder.

My letter dated 7th August clearly states £1859.29 was my current closing balance at the time, app is still showing £1859.27.

So something is clearly wrong here.

Does beg the question can Coventry add things up properly?.

Going to have to do another webchat or something later I think.

jameseonline

Just requested my Principality 2 Year Healthy Habits to be closed, hopefully that will be done today.