Anyone who’s got a savings account for their kids should check the interest rate cos it’s highly likely your children are being robbed!
We have a young savers account for our daughter and yesterday I went into Lloyds to pay some money in. The ■■■■■■■ the counter noticed the interest rate was only 0.5% when it should be 3%. Apparently it’s been 3% for a couple of years. She referred me over to customer services to see what was going on.
The customer services lady said that when the interest rate rises, they don’t apply it automatically. You have to go into the bank and instruct them to apply it! Apparently they notify you in writing of the rate rise (I guess they put it somewhere in amongst all the junk mail they send you! Which is why it gets missed!).
I was absolutely livid, after all that’s happened with the banks over the last few years, and how they are all trying to win the publics trust back, they are sneakily robbing our children!
They wouldn’t even let me claim it back, they just applied the higher rate as of now.
I then decided to pay a visit to some of the other high street banks to see how they do business, with a view to moving my daughters money. From what I can gather, Natwest and Barclays apply any interest rate rise automatically, however, their rates are rubbish 1.5% for Natwest and 0.5% for Barclays I think. Halifax is 3% but they operate the same as Lloyds. Santander I think is about 1% and they operate the same as Lloyds. They seem to think that it’s standard practice for all banks to do it this way.
So what I would say to all of you that have savings accounts for your kids is to check the interest rate and make sure it has been applied to the accounts
Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.