Monday December 17th, 2007
Have you seen the bright blue full page adverts in the press for Barclays products? They make me growl; I’m quite staggered that it has the chutzpah to do it.
Today’s advert:
“A GREAT HOME FOR YOUR SAVINGS
Day to day savings account 4.26% AER”
Can you believe it is advertising and boasting about a rate of just four and a quarter percent. How ridiculous when, as you’ll see from the top Savings Accounts article you can easily earn 6.5% elsewhere!
Then there was its ad last month (which I don’t have a copy of, but said something like, “switch to our great loan rate and get £50”. This in many ways is worse, even though at the time Barclays loan rate was close, although not quite as cheap a loan as possible (see Cheapest Loans if you’re interested). Yet switching a loan is not simply a case of finding a cheaper rate and moving to it; there are penalties for switching a loan and so actually it means you can move to a cheaper loan rate but it’ll cost you more (see Cut the cost of existing loans).
