Save your cash from the zombie accounts

I first became aware of this game many years ago, when I found that Abbey National had dropped the interest on an account from something respectable to 0.1% without telling me.

It is not good that companies are allowed to entice us with high interest rates and then phase them out, at the same time offering a new account to draw in more customers. I acknowledge that customers are told about interest rate changes these days, but I think the companies should be required to automatically transfer to money to achieve best interest unless instructed otherwise by the customer.

I’m not going to admit how long I have had money in ‘zombie accounts’, but I found one paying 0.05% early this year.

I entered a competition when I was about 17 and won £3 in my very own Lloyd’s or TSB account, I forget which. That was some 30+ years ago, and of course I can’t find any paperwork for it. But no worries there’s a free service that will track down your zombie accounts, except they couldn’t find details of it 🙁 It was a national competition, so I was very surprised they couldn’t find any details of the account 🙁

For some of us ‘oldies’ the drop in savings rates has had the equivalent effect on our disposable incomes as the pay freeze has had on those in work. We certainly are in ‘it’ together- and ‘it’ doesn’t smell very nice.
Anything over two percent seems to come with caveats. One has to have an accompanying account to qualify and there are limits as to what can be invested making generous interest rates a very limited advantage. Other accounts used to fix for better interest, but these seem to be no better than the rest. ISA’s too, were supposed to offer a tax free home that would beat inflation – not any more. There are a few banks that I wouldn’t go near, what ever the rate, simply because the British end belongs to somewhere abroad that could fold. I don’t want the hassle of claiming anything back under any guarantee – if there happens to be one. I admit to being too naïve (and cautious) to dabble in stocks and shares. I could get all bitter and twisted, but life is too busy so I’ll just tighten the belt and get on with it.

The Skipton Building Society are especially good at reducing interest rates without any warning. They used to send letters when rates changed but not anymore. No emails, nothing.

We left our Santander ISAs to collect interest. That was the whole point of them. We were aware that interest rates were dropping but the hassle of finding and choosing and arranging transfer to other accounts meant it wasn’t something we got round to. Then we suddenly received an ultimatum that unless we did something our accounts would be made dormant. We were very heavily involved in family matters at the time and could do no more than present ourselves with passports and statements and letters and jump up and down assuring them that there was no reason to presume that we were no longer at our address. We were just otherwise engaged at present and did not want our accounts made dormant.

We were told to put some money in. “But they’re ISAs and we can’t put new money into more than one cash ISA in a tax year” we replied. That was what they wanted us to do and to sign that we wouldn’t put any money anywhere else that year and hadn’t put any more anywhere else.
We didn’t. We phoned head office to complain. We got a ridiculous letter saying that we hadn’t had our National Insurance numbers. Completely ridiculous because every time you go into the bank and want to do something they say “Don’t worry, as you’ve got an ISA we already have your National Insurance number”.

It is still unresolved in the pending tray. What was someone thinking… and why on earth can’t they train their staff if they are going to send out letters to be able to respond in a way that the public can have confidence in?