Will this work?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Nat West offer an account, which Rewards you with 3% cash back on your household bills paid via DD, but pays zero interest on any credit in the account.

OVO the energy supplier pay 3% on any surplus you pay via DD towards your energy bill, up to a maximum of 12x your DD value. So it seems a better interest rate than most banks offer, so it really is worth while paying too much on the DD to be in surplus.

It strikes me that the larger the OVO DD, the more I get from the Nat West as a 3% Reward plus the surplus I pay OVO also gains 3% interest too. How easy is it to get your surplus funds back from OVO?

What have I missed? Any gotchas?

[Tricky Dicky]

Go to Santander, they pay 3% on your household bills and 3% on any credit a bove £3000 to £20,000. Only other conditions are you need 2 DDs and at least £500 per month coming plus a £6 pm fee.

Richard

[Harry Bloomfield]

Tricky Dicky wrote on 16/02/2016 :

I had wanted to open an Santandar account for the household DD's but my other half wasn't happy with Santandar..

[Brian Gaff]

Yes they do not seem to be very good at producing blind friendly info either. A bit muddled. Brian

[Peter Johnson]

I got a refund of some of my OVO overpayment on request last year. Took several days I recall.

[Peter Johnson]

£5 per month fee, in my case cancelled out by the £5 pm they pay me for paying my £500 pm Santander mortgage.

[Martin Bonner]

They also have *terrible* customer satisfaction reviews. There's a reason they need to pay that much to attract customers ...

[whisky-dave]

I've had no problem with them after I transfered from Barcleys. Mines £5 per month fee was £2 last year but I think that's an offer for switchers only for the 1st year I think.

[Bob Minchin]

Beware OVO exit charges. Not only do they charge if you leave for another supplier (which might be fair enough) but they also charge the same amount (£30 per fuel) if you change tariff within OVO which I think is despicable. I protested but they would not discuss it so I paid up and left vowing never to go back.

[tabbypurr]

IME their service is appalling, and makes their products nonfunctional. I w ouldn't go back to santander for any level of interest. And these interest bearing current accounts are a joke anyway, you get interest then pay it ba ck in the form of a monthly fee, so the quoted interest rate is pure fictio n.

NT

[Chris French]

Been fine for us, but it's always the way I guess.

Well, I guess it depends on how much you have in them. And you need to compare it to the other options (eg standard rates on 'savings accounts' are crap).

Also they often have other benefits as well. With the Santander 123 account you get cashback on Santander mortgages, utilities payments etc. IIRC we get about GBP 18-20 month which easily covers the charge, even with the recent increase.

With our Nationwide account we get some insurances, such as Travel, Breakdown etc. again easily covering the cost of the fee.

[tabbypurr]

Yes, if you don't however much it is in there all the time you lose money r ather than 'earn' it

sounds handy

If it's worth anything. A lot of insurance doesn't make sense.

NT

[Chris French]

Well yes, but in this case we would otherwise buy breakdown insurance for 2 cars/drivers and travel insurance anyway which would cost us more than the fee. Anything else would be a bonus.

As it happens it also has mobile phone insurance, which I wouldn't normally bother with, but I did claim on and got a new phone for an excess of £25.

Like all these things you need to decide if it's worth it for your circumstances.

[alan_m]

They have been taking lessons from British Gas.