I noticed that the interest rate for an ME Bank savings account that I had, reduced from 2.95% to 2.85%.
No messages notifying this change. No mention of the interest rate change on the statement.
Just an inconspicuous update on their website.
Is this acceptable?
When another bank ING lowered their rate last year, they sent out an email to let those with accounts know.
It seems that ME Bank just seem to have made the adjustment, and hoped it that existing customers would not notice.
I just rang ING. The rate on mine is 2.8
Hasn’t changed and no announcement of a change advised as yet.
No. Read the fine print.
Could be in the post maybe?
Not unless you were guaranteed X% for X amount of time
Yes, some banks give no notification (NAB, MeBank), and others are really good (Rams, Rabobank, ING) even if the notification is one day or less before the change.
They usually have themselves covered, e.g. the MeBank's :
- Interest rate is current at 12-Feb-2018 and subject to change.
And nowhere is it stated you need to be informed.
Edit: the last ING interest change, email was sent on the day the change happened.
So maybe the questions should be:
'is it ethical for banks to reduce the interest rate without communicating this directly with their customers?', and
'should banks be allowed to have conditions where it is up to the customer to regularly check the banks web site to find out if the interest rate has changed?'
I believe that all banks publish this info in the major newspapers, which probably satisfies the regulatory requirements.
Deceiving? Yes.
Acceptable? Probably. Well, they get away with it.
Ethical? Depends what the majority of people think.
They don't need to notify you if it has been made clear at the time of opening account that it is a variable interest rate account and interest rates are subject to change.
Rams at least communicated when they dropped to 2.8%. I actually opened up a ME Bank account with the intent to use as a third party to store my first home savings. Looks like I’ll be closing that now.
well, ING just reduced to 2.6 but website still 2.8