What do you do once you have used all of the cashback switching offers from banks?

boingy

sgthammer said:

Boingy: To exclude everyone who's *ever* had a switching bonus would probably require the bank to keep details of closed accounts longer than they're required to by law or want to be bothered with.

They can keep your details for pretty much as long as they want and there are already some banks who exclude any previous customer from switching offers. I seem to recall First Direct excluding someone on here because they had an HSBC account decades ago. I'm still a customer of Nationwide and I made a data request to them a year or two ago and was quite surprised to find they have kept absolutely everything about me since my first account in the mid-eighties! They even had a scan of my first application form and all the statements for every account including the closed ones.

UKX69

Jami74 said:

I think of it as getting paid to try a bank/account. I've never immediately switched away or closed a switched account and have often used it and got additional products (savings accounts, credit cards etc). Although people here talk about the cold hard number of pounds they've made I think it's a minority who just switch and dump. Occasionally there are threads from people who have abused the system and felt the repucussions. It's not loads different I don't think to going to a supermarket that you don't usually shop at and stocking up on their loss leaders. 

The 'get a second job or something' is probably not an applicable suggestion to those with a money saving hobby, the people who need a second job to pay their debts aren't the ones doing the bank switching. It's like charity shop customers, they are not the destitute of society, trying to find a pair of jeans with no holes for next to nothing, they're the better off hoping to find something decent for a fraction of the cost despite being able to afford brand new.

Well said.

UKX69

boingy said:

sgthammer said:

Boingy: To exclude everyone who's *ever* had a switching bonus would probably require the bank to keep details of closed accounts longer than they're required to by law or want to be bothered with.

They can keep your details for pretty much as long as they want and there are already some banks who exclude any previous customer from switching offers. I seem to recall First Direct excluding someone on here because they had an HSBC account decades ago. I'm still a customer of Nationwide and I made a data request to them a year or two ago and was quite surprised to find they have kept absolutely everything about me since my first account in the mid-eighties! They even had a scan of my first application form and all the statements for every account including the closed ones.

Yes, quite true. I recently opened a Nationwide Flex account and was surprised that during the application process it threw up the statement ‘It appears that you are already a member therefore your details will be pre-populated to speed up the application’. My previous account was donkey’s ago!

Olenna

boingy said:

sgthammer said:

Boingy: To exclude everyone who's *ever* had a switching bonus would probably require the bank to keep details of closed accounts longer than they're required to by law or want to be bothered with.

They can keep your details for pretty much as long as they want and there are already some banks who exclude any previous customer from switching offers. I seem to recall First Direct excluding someone on here because they had an HSBC account decades ago. I'm still a customer of Nationwide and I made a data request to them a year or two ago and was quite surprised to find they have kept absolutely everything about me since my first account in the mid-eighties! They even had a scan of my first application form and all the statements for every account including the closed ones.

They will delete old accounts once a relationship ends much sooner as they can only retain it for legal and regulatory reasons. If they defaulted (or were otherwise delinquent) then they usually retain as along as the business requires.