It’s alright for all these banks offering you savings account with crap interest rates. I don’t have a great deal of money to invest in a savings account and it worked out that I would be getting about 0.4% interest on a savings account from my bank HSBC, which I was a little disappointed by, ok, a lot disappointed by! I trotted around the net, had a look on my two favourite sites, ciao and dooyoo and decided to go for an internet savings account against the likes of other banks and superstores.
There isn’t a huge amount of choice in this field really, Smile, Cahoot and Egg being the main contenders. Egg seemed the best choice to me, they offered the highest interest and also, you didn’t need a current account with them to open a savings account, you can literally just have
somewhere to put your money, plus, on top of that I get a gross interest rate of 4.0% which is guaranteed until 2007!
Signing up to Egg was easy peasy, I simply filled in an online form that took about 10 minutes, setting up security, giving them my details, filling in bits and pieces about how and when I would like to transfer money etc etc. One thing that I really was unsure about was my credit rating, which is in all truth, pretty poor (but I’m working on it!). They never asked for any bank statements or anything like that, they just asked me personal information without all the hassles of how bad your credit scoring or debts are, very nice.
After the form is all filled in, you have to wait a couple of days, though it says 7 on the website for your completed form to come through the door. Fill in any errors and sign it then send it back to them in the prepaid envelope and your done. Egg will then open an account for you on receipt of your signed form and your away.
The website is very easy to use and for extra security you are asked to fill in 6 fields before you can get into your account area, so that added bit of security is there, don’t let it put you off though, it takes literally 30 seconds. Once inside your account you can view all the services your signed up for, and then view them individually if you wish and view up to the minute statements. Transferring money into my savings account couldn’t be simpler as my current account details are stored in the system, all I do is select where I want to transfer money from and which egg account I would like to transfer it to, type the amount and wey-hey, I’m done, is should take about 3-5 days for the money to transfer via BACs. You can also do this a bit quicker via CHAPS, though there is a fee of £25 if you wish to do this.
If you want, you can transfer money weekly, monthly or yearly and have it set up in the same kind of way as a direct debit, just taking the money of your card or just out of your current account. Got a bit of money that you just want to transfer? Then just click the ‘one off’ link, type in the details and your done. Withdrawing money is the same process, just the other way around.
Customer service so far I have found excellent. I wanted to know if I could have 2 individual saving accounts under my one egg account, for different purposes (say one for saving up for a new car and the other for general future savings). This isn’t detailed in the extensive help files on site, so I sent an e-mail via the secure e-mail feature in my account to the customer services department. This was Sunday morning, but Monday morning I had the answer in my inbox telling me I could do this, all I had to do was send another secure e-mail asking for them to set this up for me so that they have records of my instructions, it really couldn’t be simpler. The e-mail had a personal touch to it and was clear and simple with other ideas of what I could do to fit my requirements, though not pushing me into a service in any way whatsoever.
Overall, although I haven’t been with Egg long but I have been extremely impressed with their efficiency, timescales and customer service. If only Banks could be a bit more like this!
Egg is run under the financial name of Prudential, so if you are worried about them being a bit of a hit and miss internet site, that should cure your worries, they are backed up by a well known financial institute.
It only takes £1 to open a savings account and with 4.0% gross interest in these crap financial times, you really don’t have any excuse. It doesn’t stop at savings either, you can get insurance, loans, mortgages, investments, credit cards and much more. I think you have to be over 18 to open an account, though I’m not sure, it might be 16, whereas with the likes of Cahoot, you need to be over 21.
Go on, get saving!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
i just looked up their website and the 4% was only for fixed bonds. is this the best deal at the moment, does anyone know? please leave a message in my guestbook if you know! nat
coolaskaha 19.02.2003 19:32
I've got an egg savings account and a egg credit card and never had any problmes with them. Keep up the good op writing!!
ariadne 16.01.2003 16:14
This is a very helpful review but I think it would be even better if it was listed under "accounts" rather than "customer/general service" as that's what it's mainly about.
Nov 25th, 2002
very helpful by (97%):
helpful by (3%):
