The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

flaneurs_lobster

subjecttocontract said:

I think it's important not to restrict freedom of speech just because you don't like someone else's views.

Please don't over-dramatise @TheWoodler's perfectly reasonable observation. Freedom of speech is not being restricted, people are perfectly free to say whatever they like here (within the bounds of legality and the Forum's rules).

The suggestion is that discussion of the methods to be used to circumvent various restrictions on product availability is unwise and is likely to cause the restrictions to be more closely policed and might lead to unavailability to the cohort to whom it was originally directed.

Suggestions made elsewhere that comments here are unlikely to be seen by the product providers is naive, current technology makes finding such material trivial and any organisation with a public presence will have a function doing just that.

subjecttocontract

I see it completely differently, I see the dramatising being orchestrated by @TheWoodler not by myself and that we are both entitled to express our views, subject as you say to legality and forum rules. This is after all a forum where a range of views and opinions will be expressed. My advice would be, get used to it because, I very much doubt it's likely to change.

clairec666

Kim_13 said:

alfred64 said:

Regular savers are not known for being the most ethical. They abide by the 'greed is good' philosophy.

I struggle to see how using a Regular Saver fully in line with the terms and conditions is unethical. They may be loss leaders, but where no loopholes (more accounts than permitted by the T and Cs, posting an application for a branch only account) are used, the accounts are being used as intended. 

Maybe they didn’t envisage people opening more of them than there are months in the year, but they don’t exclude this either (and attempting to dictate what you can and can’t hold with other providers would be unenforceable and not exactly ethical either.) The average user of Regular Savers probably has 1 or 2 with their main current account/savings provider, which is hardly greedy.

Same thing could be said for current account switching bonuses.

Banks weigh up the pros and cons when offering loss-leaders. Presumably it is of benefit to them, i.e. attracting new and potentially loyal customers, and they are willing to make a loss on other customers who will jump ship when the high rate drops.

WillPS

Dizzycap said:

WillPS said:

s71hj said:

Well.. A massive vote of thanks is in order to the collective knowledge of this forum that led me to print 2 generic application forms and post them to the Stone branch for the Hanley branch regular saver. Accounts now show in both mine and my wife's Hanley apps. 

Result! Glad they haven't slammed the doors shut.

I posted one of my Hanley branch RS application to the Stone branch and they wouldn't open it without a visit in person, so well done if you've managed to get a branch RS opened by post.

When were you told this? I guess you either need to get lucky with whoever is processing post or a change of policy has occurred (one way or t'other).

Dizzycap

alfred64 said:

Regular savers are not known for being the most ethical. They abide by the 'greed is good' philosophy.

Sounds like sour grapes to me and unless your bank / savings are held within a 'Green' account, all and any other types of bank accounts will fall into perceived, non-ethical - Received a paper bank statement recently? It's non-ethical and so the merry-go-round chugs along........

Kim_13

Branch only terms are disappointing, given that the general trend is the number of branches decreasing and not increasing. It seems to be the smaller societies are more likely to release an attractive branch only offering, so of course those that don’t live near any of them (which probably means in/near a reasonably big city) get increasingly disappointed as it is never ‘their turn’ as it were. I have a Coventry BS branch, but they haven’t offered anything unbeatable since the FHS1 announced a rate increase to 5% in 2022/2023 - and that was available online. Also a Nationwide, but they only accept online applications for their RS.

As regards to the Braintree Regular Saver, is the rate not comparable to the Ware Regular Saver? That was launched as celebration of sorts following their refurbishment, if I recall. I found it listed at 4.45% as of June, but the Small Saver appears to have gone down in September, so I’m guessing Ware did also. That it is a three year account is attractive, but that the rate is variable and (judging by Ware) cut with every base rate cut makes it not worth going for unless you live on their doorstep. If it were a fixed rate account, that would be different, as you could judge travel costs against a guaranteed return.

It might be that the target market they are going for are people who aren’t online, as 4% looks very good to people with money in the average high street savings account. Artificially keeping rates lower to deter speculative postal applications would be a shame, as they could deal with that by punishing those who do it (account closed and interest paid at easy access rate, for example) rather than punishing everyone. I’ve never tried it and hope that there are never so few decent offerings that I feel the need to, as my postcode doesn’t qualify as ‘local’ with any society.

Hanley’s staff were probably accepting them until they were told otherwise, and as the account has been going for over a month now, the majority will know not to.

Slinky

With the regards to a local BS branch being overwhelmed with postal applications, if my local BS is anything to go by, they would probably be quite pleased to have something to do. Whenever I walk past there's never more than 3 customers in the branch, today 3 staff behind the counters chatting amongst themselves with not a customer in sight. They have a RS on offer at 5%, they're seemingly not exactly swamped with customers.

mhoc

Just logged onto LLoyds and there is a notice that I will soon be able to see my Halifax accounts as well.

How will they manage to merge the 2 - will they do some sort of name and address sweep?
But what happens if you have a different email and/or mobile assigned to your Halifax than your LLoyds? 

I know that they seem to think it will make things somehow easier for customers but for me I like to have things seperate and change often seems like a negative thing. 
Also I am worried whether in the future having both LLoyds regular savers and Halifax regular saver will even be allowed - even though they are all completely different  

flaneurs_lobster

mhoc said:

Just logged onto LLoyds and there is a notice that I will soon be able to see my Halifax accounts as well.

How will they manage to merge the 2 - will they do some sort of name and address sweep?
But what happens if you have a different email and/or mobile assigned to your Halifax than your LLoyds? 

I know that they seem to think it will make things somehow easier for customers but for me I like to have things seperate and change often seems like a negative thing. 
Also I am worried whether in the future having both LLoyds regular savers and Halifax regular saver will even be allowed - even though they are all completely different  

There's already a thread on this specific subject here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6636486/lloyds-and-halifax-co-servicing

Section62

mhoc said:

...
Also I am worried whether in the future having both LLoyds regular savers and Halifax regular saver will even be allowed - even though they are all completely different  

As they allow both BOS and Halifax RS accounts to be held by the same person I don't think there's any reason to believe this change will directly affect the availability of RS accounts in the future.

The impact of this change that most likely affects me is having the combined list of accounts with Lloyds, BOS and Halifax being unmanageably long for online banking.  So it has prompted me to go through having a cull of easy access accounts from past matured RS accounts.  Since each account to be closed has a nominal £1 plus a bit of interest in it, I'm seeing this as a generally positive outcome.

The change also means it will be easier to do the monthly money cycle between Lloyds,BOS and Halifax for fee avoidance purposes.  One less login needed to do the job.