'Pausing' autosave is misleading

Everything Chip
#1

Hi everybody,
I was in 2 minds about signing up to a Chip account because I didn’t want to autosave I just wanted to invest a lump sum.

What swayed me was that the website says ‘If you’re feeling cautious you can make Chip move less by adjusting your save level (or pause your auto-saves) at any time.’ I think that is misleading because actually you can only pause it for 3 months. I’ll now have the worry about forgetting to pause it again and the app taking money from my account.

I have a question if I may. I’ve been told my customer service that with the ai account it’s possible to skip withdrawals, how does this work, is the customer informed before the money is withdrawn?

Thank you

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#2

You could downgrade to ChipLite - so no AI and no charges until you switch back on.

#3

I know but that loses the whole point for me. ChipLite’s 0% and I said that my intention was to invest a lump sum of £5000, which was (perhaps not so obvious to others) to gain 1.25%.

#4

I may have that wrong but there’s little point in earning 1.25% on £2000 which is what ChipLite is isn’t it?

Thanks for the reply.

#5

From the FAQs page https://www.getchip.uk/faq

" You can skip a save before 3pm, and you can pause Chip altogether in your profile tab."

I believe there is a notification and possibly an email before the autosave is taken and you can then “skip” the save if you want to.

However, someone else will be better placed to advise because I have had autosaves paused for ages before ChipLite was available so I have forgotten exactly what happens.

With the three-month pause thing, I was good at remembering to extend the period of the pause (you don’t have to wait until the end of the 3 months to choose a new end date so I would just check if I could extend every few weeks) but you could just set a calendar remind every month / 2 months / 3 months to remind yourself.

If you did forget to renew the pause, you would be notified of the pending save, could cancel it and then could pause again.

I think the maximum pausing limit now makes sense because if you don’t want to use autosaves at all there is now another option available. However, I take the point that you can’t earn the high interest rate on as high a balance with the free version.

If you do accidentally save some money you didn’t intend to because you forgot to skip/pause the save, you could just transfer the saved money back to your current account - it isn’t lost forever.

I am currently unclear as to whether more than one withdrawal a month is charged for - I think the terms refer to reserving the right to charge for extra withdrawals, but I don’t think the right has been exercised yet. However, if you are going to have autosaves paused and only occasionally forget, this should be fine for you as one withdrawal a month should be fine.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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#6

That’s very helpful. Thank you.

#7

If you invest in Chiplite you get 1.25% on up to £2000 only and no charges. If you want to earn bonus on up to £5000 then you have to invest in ChipAI but you’ll get charged £1.50 every 4 weeks whether you make any autosaves or not so your effective rate of return on £5000 will be 0.83%, not the ‘market leading1.25%’ that is being shouted about. I think Chip deliberately makes things as complicated as possible so that it’s hard for people to work out what they’re actually getting and I think they should just be upfront and honest about their product. As an investor and a former saver I am not happy about this at all.

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#8

I work for a large telecommunications company. Historically customers wanting to leave had to jump through hoops to find out how to do this, products were confusing and overlapped and because of discounts most customers were paying different prices each month. Churn ie number of customers leaving each year was about 12%.

Over the last few years the business has changed the approach, simplified the product mix, standardised the pricing and reduced the discounting. Finding information is simple, easy and detailed.

What had been the impact to the customer. They love how clean and simple everything is. They like it that the message is consistent and give the customer all the information they need to make a choice. The impact is churn has fallen to 7%, revenues have risen and customer satisfaction is very high.

So the moral of the story is there are great rewards in having a simple and clear message that is consistent across all media, t&cs etc. Transparency is key, and I don’t think chip management understands this.

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#9

I don’t think they understand anything much at all. When they launched this account in November I asked directly on 2 occasions whether there would be any charges for holding this account and was clearly told that there would be no charge, once via email by hello@getchip.uk and also by Krish Chip on the Chipmunks facebook page. I recommended someone to sign up on the basis of this information. Then all of a sudden with no notification I discover there is a £19.50 per annum charge if you want to get 1.25% on £5000 (so effectively 0.83%) and you can only earn the full 1.25% via Chip Lite on £2000. I’m really relieved that person never signed up as I would have felt bad for inadvertently misleading them and I’m also relieved that I didn’t sign up on the basis of misinformation, thereby incurring charges. I hate the way Chip operates, I find it so unprofessional and it doesn’t bode well for us as investors, although frankly I’ve always viewed my investment as akin to a bet on the horses anyway so fortunately only put in a small amount!

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#10

I couldn’t agree more. My thoughts exactly.

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