Goldfish Accounts > Reviews > Goldfish - sinks like a stone

Author's product rating:   

Product package
Security and Privacy

Advantages:	Was a good interest rate
Disadvantages:	No longer in business; online account; bad service generally

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I have had a Goldfish savings account for around a year now. Over that time, I’ve put the fact to the back of my mind, the money has just sat there, and I tried to forget about the whole thing – it’s been one of those decisions in life that I don’t exactly regret, but it’s caused me a lot of aggravation.
From the beginning, I’ve often wondered what on earth made me open the account at all.

Alright, I’ll ask myself the question: What on earth attracted me to the Goldfish savings account?

The answer is, at the time that I opened the account, there was an offer, which meant that anyone opening a Goldfish on-line savings account received £20.00 extra, as a gift, into their account.
A pretty good offer – there seemed to be no strings, I didn’t have to pay a certain amount in every month; I didn’t have to pay in a huge mount. I opened the account with the princely sum of £200.
And there were no problems with getting the extra £20, either

Anything else that I liked about the account?

The interest rate was good, on a par with the other online accounts at the time (around a year ago), 4% or thereabouts.

So – what was the problem?

First problem I encountered was accessing the account on line. I made a tiny mistake typing in my password (sent to me in the post, generated by them, and as such very difficult to remember).
To cut a long story short I had to ring them up, but happened to be ringing from a different number (at work) from the number I had quoted on my application. They wouldn’t budge on giving me password, or resetting it.

So I said there and then can I close the **** account, then please? The answer was no – not until I had input my password correctly. They were not at all pleasant about the whole thing, too. Customer service?
Grrrrrr…..

I did finally get through to them on the correct phone, and reset my password.
Still didn’t invest any more money in the account, on principle.

And to make matters worse…
The savings accounts are now being closed. The Goldfish name sems set to disappear / be taken over. I’ve transferred my money to a different account – all of this was carried out online. It went fairly smoothly, but…
I now login to my account, and it just says there is no record of anything. Which I take to mean the account has been emptied. That’s fine as it’s by me, but I would have liked a record there of what the amount was. I didn’t receive a letter to confirm the transaction, or an email, either. God help me if there was any error in transferring the correct amount.

You won’t get chance to open Goldfish a savings account, as it’s defunct – lucky you.
I did get an £20 out of it all, but I’m not sure it was worth it!

There’s no point you going there, but the website is at www.goldfish.com