Rotton Egg??

If a company advertises widely that it 'promises' / guarantees that something will be the case, therebye inducing millions of people to buy into its product, and it subsequently renegues on this 'promise' / guarantee, is not that fraud? In this case Egg promised / guaranteed that the interest rate on its internet savings account would at least match the BOE base rate until 2007.

See below for Eggs opinion of a complaint about this... The second paragraph where they state that you cannot open a new account and transfer money into it from an existing one seems to me to be an unreasonable condition? Solution is to transfer all money out of Egg I guess. Give Cahoot a go I think. Any other suggestions?

Dear Iain

I'm sorry to hear that you're not happy with the methods we're using to try and attract customers to us.

The new account is to attract new money to Egg and as such, our terms and conditions state you're not able to withdraw funds from an exiting account and then put them in the new Egg Savings Account.

Existing customers can benefit from the new rate, if they apply online for a new account and arrange for new funds to be transferred to us from their external accounts.

Should you need any further information about this account, please let me know and I'll be happy to assist you further.

Thanks for your e-mail.

Regards

Emma Butler

Internet Customer Services

Dont think its fraud as they are probably matching their promises (within a

Do think that alienating your existing customer base by offering an account that pays an extra 0.75 percent, while not permitting customers to change to that account when they notice you are trying to con them is a spectacualr marketing own goal.

Especially so when a large part of your marketing in the past has aimed at portraying yourself as an 'alternative' to the tradional practices of banks and building societies and boasted of offering an account with a consistent high rate rather than flash new accounts and obsolete interest rates.

I'm shutting down my account and transferring out.

They have never allowed themselves any time lag at all, in the past. Their rates always changed on the same or next day. Therefore it was good to have funds with them when the rate was going up, but bad if the rates were going down. I think that the implication in their previous advertising said something to the effect that they would ALWAYS at least match the base rate.

I shall watch the Halifax before moving, since they are very aggressive in this area just now. Not to mention ING ( even if their AER is really only

No they haven't. They've done this for as long as I can remember. I got 5% introductory then 4% standard a couple of years ago.

What 'promise' have they broken ?

Daytona

So what's the difficulty? Just move money from egg into your current account, and then open the new account with that money.

Obviously, one can do that. The problem with all these things is that the money is not attracting any interest whilst it is in transit. Unfortunately, it seems to spend quite a lot of time in transit. For if you transfer money from a 4% account to a 4.5% account, as is proposed, and it takes 4 days to get to your current account and 4 more days to get to the new account, it will take 64 days to make up the interest it has lost. Actually, it is likely to lose more than 8 day's interest due to the fact that the weekend, which it must straddle, will add another 2 days, so you'll get your lost interest back in 3 months :-( The b*****ds have you every which way !

I've just moved the money out. It wont be going back in because of their pig headedness in refusing to let me do a staright transfer. I've decided I dont like their way of doing business, depite getting a few tenths less wher I've just plonked it.