well access i couldnt agree more with your sentiments. it just sickens me that they can get away with "false headline advertising". if the 5.48% relates to just year 3 they should damn well say so. lots of them are LYING like this and also hideaway the fact that they drop your money into virtually no-interest accounts if instructions arent received by a certain date. 3 years is too far out for me anyway unless i take a calculated gamble on an account with a penalty fee regarding withdrawals/closure. that said a lot are going for 120 or even 270 days these days. i have elderly parents that are always getting caught after opening variable rate accounts at certain "good rates" - they dont seem to realise that you have to keep moving your cash to maintain a half decent rate these days. there must be many older,disadvanaged folks out there that are getting one tenth of one per cent these days without realising it. its totally immoral. things have got really bad if the money lenders cant make a turn on the cash people deposit without ripping them off.

more power to mr lewis i say !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First and forgive me if I've bored you with this before - What's the difference between a BS/bank and the used car industry. The former is better regulated.

The 5.48% is only for year three unless I've misread the website. I would not give these good folk a penny of my cash because to start with they treat my money as theirs.

"6 - Maturity
Your bond will mature on the third anniversary of the date of opening. We will write to you prior to maturity informing you of current investment options available at that time. As this is a three year bond, an annual interest statement will be sent. On maturity, the bond will be closed. If your instructions have not been received before the bond maturity date, the proceeds of your matured bond will be transferred into a new Fixed Rate Bond of equal or shorter term (if available) or an Escalator Instant account or its equivalent."

If I did have a brainstorm and invested with these excellent people and was so unfortunate to be unable to give instructions for a long period of time and I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky
to be bunged into the ESCALATOR with my £25k + I could relax in my coma knowing that my cash was earning 0.10%.

As the great Martin Lewis (surely overdue for a senior gong) said recently words to the effect of it's them and us. (Sir) Martin is unable to take up the cudgels here as he did so ably on "Bank Charges" because his site does not accept advertising and he simply hasn't got the resources to go into battle for savers in this sort of situation apparently. I say apparently because the hoi polloi cannot contact (Sir) Martin as per info on his humble website.

so the headline rate is 5.48% on the comparison sites.

interest rates are as follows:

year 1 is 3.5%

year 2 is 4.5%

year 3 is 5.5%

as far as i can see the average interest rate over the 3 years has to therefore be 4.5%. even if you compound the interest it is still ony 4.7% ... so can someone smarter than me explain how they arrive at 5.48% ???????