RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS: No such thing as a free £200 from a bank

If a restaurant offered to pay you to sit and have a nice meal, would you do it? Or if an airline said it would give you cash to take one of its flights, would you say yes?

Whether you would or wouldn’t, I’m sure you’d be asking: what’s the catch? You’d be suspicious of why they’d fork out to get you as a customer instead of sending you a bill.

Yet, this is exactly what we’re seeing from the high street banks at the moment. Several are offering huge cash incentives to anyone who switches their current account to them. For example, RBS, NatWest and TSB are giving away £200 and First Direct £175.

But, just ask yourself: what’s in it for them? After all, banks are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They are profit-making companies, with shareholders to keep happy.

And you can bet your two hundred quid they are only offering you wads of cash upfront because they think they’ll make it back from you – and then some – further down the line.

Cash in hand: You can bet your two hundred quid they are only offering you wads of cash upfront because they think they’ll make it back from you further down the line

It may be that once you are a current account customer, they will try to cross-sell you other products such as personal loans or credit cards that will make them a profit.

Or they may be hoping that you will leave lump sums in your account, where they will pay you a poor level of interest.

Or perhaps they are selling you a paid-for account, with nice-to-have perks such as phone insurance or free entry to airport lounges that you don’t really need.

Don’t think for a minute they are doing it to help cash-strapped customers. Over the last fortnight, the high street banks have shown unequivocally where their loyalties lie – and it’s with shareholders and executive pay packets, and definitely not with savers.

The six biggest boosted profits by £7 billion last year, by increasing interest rates for borrowers and not passing on the bulk of the recent rate rises to savers, their financial results reveal.

Bank bosses were hauled in front of MPs on the Treasury Select Committee last month to explain why they have failed so miserably to pass on rate rises to savers. They made mealy-mouthed excuses, and then shuffled off and continued with the same practices as before. RBS and NatWest pay 0.65 per cent, TSB 0.7 per cent and First Direct 1.2 per cent on easy access accounts.

I’m not saying for a minute that you shouldn’t take them up on their free cash offers.

Switching banks keeps them on their toes. As Mark Mullen, chief executive of Atom Bank, put it to me last week: ‘Loyalty to your bank is bad for your financial health.’

In a cost-of-living crisis, these cash payments are of course very welcome. If you can find a new bank that better serves your needs than your old one, then go for it. And take the money. But just keep an eye on what they are getting in return.

No response from Ofcom over broadband price hikes 

The regulator Ofcom has yet to report the findings of its investigation into mid-contract broadband price rises.

We believe that inflation-busting, mid-contract price hikes are grossly unfair and should be reined in by the regulator.

But then, Ofcom has been very busy of late with other pressing matters. Last week, it held its Antique Phone Show competition on social media.

Twitter followers were asked to share photos of their old mobile phones and tell Ofcom about their ‘own golden oldie handsets’. The regulator then took time to compliment them on the old dusty handsets found at the back of drawers.

The broadband and telecom providers must be quaking in their boots.

Email dilemma 

I still remember the exciting day that my family first got the internet at home. Setting up an email address was part of the process. Like many households, we didn’t know we could go with other email account providers instead.

So I really feel for those who did the same, in good faith, and are now stuck with an email address that tethers them to their broadband provider indefinitely. Yes, I know you can switch email address whenever you like. But, it’s hard to let go of an archive of social interactions that spans years without worrying you’ll delete something precious.

Sky manages to let former customers hold on to their email addresses for free – why can’t the other providers?

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk