Perhaps the most interesting aspect is how the cash is sliced. The poster figure is real, but it arrives in pieces, and the second piece depends on a habit you have to keep for months. I have found that people remember the headline and forget the timetable. That is how a good deal becomes a mild disappointment.
What The Barclays Switching Cash Actually Pays
Right now the lender sits at the top of the switching table, and it does so with two offers rather than one. The richer path is a Premier account. The everyday path is a standard bank account opened in the app. Neither is a blank cheque. Both ask you to complete a full switch, move direct debits, and push a set amount of money through the new account inside a short window. After that, a monthly card habit unlocks the rest.
On the Premier side, the package is framed as £600 in total. The switching element is commonly described as an initial bonus in the region of £450, built from a £350 switch payment plus related reward cash, with a further £150 paid as a Monthly Engagement Reward. On the standard side, the split is cleaner: £150 up front in free cash, plus another £150 in the same monthly engagement structure, for £300 all in. The bank has said neither slice is subject to UK income tax. I would still treat that as a starting point, not a personal tax ruling. Rules can be read differently once your wider income picture gets messy.
Why does the split matter? Because the second half is not a gift for opening the account. It is a payment for using it. Miss the card target in a given month and that month’s slice can slip. Do the maths on a tired Tuesday and you may decide the headline was never yours.
The Premier Route And The Income Gate
Premier is not a vibe. It is a threshold. To be eligible you generally need to earn £75,000 a year, or hold at least £100,000 in eligible savings or investments with the bank. That second route is easy to misread. The money has to sit with them, not in a rival brokerage, not under the mattress, not in a partner’s name unless the account rules allow it. If your salary is £68,000 and your investments live elsewhere, you are probably looking at the standard offer, however tidy your credit file is.
I have watched friends argue this point at dinner. One insists a household income should count. Another waves a bonus letter. A third has the savings but they are tied up in a pension that the eligibility wording will not touch. The honest answer is dull: read the current criteria on the application screen before you move a single direct debit. Eligibility language shifts. A screenshot from last spring is not a contract.
Once you are in, the 30-day clock is unforgiving. To qualify for that initial chunk, you need to complete a full switch using the Current Account Switch Service, move at least three direct debits, and pay in at least £5,000. Three. Not two. And £5,000, not a polite trickle. For a lot of higher earners that pay-in is a salary. For someone between jobs, or paid irregularly, it can be the whole deal-breaker.
A switching bonus is not a personality test. It is a checklist with a deadline. If the checklist does not fit your month, the number on the advert is someone else’s.
Consumer finance editor
The extra £150 does not land in one go. It is paid as £30 a month for five months, and only if you make at least ten eligible debit card transactions in each of those months. Pending transactions do not count. That last line catches people. You tap the card on the 30th, the payment sits in limbo, the month rolls over, and the reward looks thinner than you expected. Clear transactions. That is the standard.
What Premier Actually Adds Beyond The Cash
Cash is the hook. The account tries to justify itself with extras, and some of them are concrete. Premier customers are offered a free Apple TV subscription, usually priced around £9.99 a month. There is talk of exclusive savings rates and mortgage options, cashback on spending, and a black Premier debit card with fee-free spending abroad. That overseas perk is not forever. Fee-free spend on the card is only valid until 27 September 2027. If you travel a lot, circle that date. After it, the card may feel ordinary.
There is also access to a dedicated Wealth Planner and a Wealth Manager, but only if you have an investment portfolio of £150,000. Notice the gap. You can qualify for the account with £100,000 in eligible savings or investments, yet the planner relationship asks for more. I think that gap is easy to miss in a hurry. The bonus and the white-glove service are not the same product.
Is the subscription a reason to switch? On its own, no. Over a year it is a bit more than £100 of value if you would have paid for it anyway. If you never open the app, it is worthless. Stack it next to fee-free foreign spend and a serious cash bonus, and the package starts to look like a proper alternative to a travel card plus a streaming bill. Stack it next to a branch you actually use, and the maths changes again.
The Standard Account And The £300 Path
If the Premier gate is shut, the standard offer is still one of the stronger deals on the high street. It pays £150 in free cash and £150 in Monthly Engagement Rewards. Same tax framing as the bigger offer. The chores are lighter, which is the point.
You open a Barclays Bank Account through the app. Not the website, not a branch form, the app. Then you complete a full switch, move at least two direct debits, and deposit a minimum of £2,000. All of that sits inside 30 days. The engagement piece mirrors Premier: £30 a month for five months, if you make at least ten eligible debit card transactions each month, pending ones excluded.
£2,000 is a kinder hurdle than £5,000. Two direct debits is kinder than three. For a household that already runs council tax, a mobile contract and a streaming bundle from one account, the switch service does most of the lifting. For someone who pays everything manually, or who only has one active debit, the offer can stall before it starts.
- Open the standard account in the app, not as an afterthought in branch.
- Finish a full switch, not a partial transfer of a couple of payments.
- Shift at least two direct debits inside the 30-day window.
- Deposit at least £2,000 in that same window.
- Then keep ten cleared card payments a month for five months if you want the second £150.
That list looks simple. It is simple, until a direct debit bounces back because the old provider needs a wet signature, or the switch service flags an account that is still in overdraft review. Build a week of slack into the 30 days. I would not start the clock the week before a holiday.
Why The Full Amount Takes About Six Months
Here is the part adverts compress. You do the switch work inside a month. The engagement rewards then drip in over five further months. Add processing time and you are looking at roughly half a year before the whole sum has actually landed. If you need the money for a bill due in November, a bonus that finishes in spring is not liquidity. It is a delayed thank-you.
I have found that people underrate this. They compare £600 with £175 as if both cheques arrive on the same Friday. They do not. A smaller bonus paid quickly can be more useful than a larger one paid in instalments you might forfeit. That is not a slogan. It is cash-flow.
There is a behavioural trick in the monthly slice, and I do not think it is accidental. Ten card payments a month pulls your spending onto their plastic. Once your coffee, your commute top-up and your supermarket run live there, leaving feels fiddly. The bonus pays you to form the habit. After month five, the habit may stay even though the £30 stops. Whether that is clever banking or a mild nudge depends on how you feel about being nudged.
How The Rest Of The Market Compares
On the Premier shelf, the current comparison is tight at the top and then empty. Barclays is out in front at £600. Two large rivals sit on £500 each for their own Premier-style switches. Those numbers only matter if you can clear their income or wealth tests as well. A £500 offer you qualify for beats a £600 offer you do not.
On ordinary current accounts, the board looks like this while the offers last. Dates move. One rival’s £240 deal was due to end on 7 October, which is a reminder that “market leading” is a weather report, not a monument.
| Account type | Provider shape | Headline bonus |
| Premier | Barclays Premier | £600 |
| Premier | Large high-street Premier rival | £500 |
| Premier | Another Premier rival | £500 |
| Standard | Barclays standard account | £300 |
| Standard | A big retail bank, offer ending early October | £240 |
| Standard | Club-style packaged current account | £200 |
| Standard | Another high-street name | £200 |
| Standard | A digital-first brand tied to a bigger group | £175 |
| Standard | A major building society | £175 |
Group rules matter more than people think. If you already bank with a parent brand, you often cannot take the switching cash from its digital offshoot, and the reverse is true as well. First-time customer definitions are written to stop exactly the hop you are planning. Check that sentence before you close anything. I would rather lose an afternoon reading small print than lose a bonus because I used to hold a savings pot with a sister brand in 2019.
The Switch Service Is Doing The Heavy Lifting
A full switch is not you emailing ten companies. The Current Account Switch Service is meant to move direct debits, standing orders and incoming payments, then redirect anything that still hits the old account. In a clean case it is boring, which is the compliment. In a messy case it is where bonuses die.
Old joint accounts, accounts with a payment holiday on a loan, and accounts that still have a cheque book somebody’s parent uses: these are the stories I hear. The service is good. It is not magic. If a direct debit is tied to an account that is overdrawn beyond the agreed limit, or if there is a dispute, the switch can pause. A paused switch inside a 30-day bonus window is a problem you want to see early.
Pay-in rules deserve their own caution. “Pay in £2,000” or “pay in £5,000” usually means cleared funds arriving in the new account. A transfer you immediately send back out may or may not count, depending on the wording in force that week. Do not get cute. Salary, a transfer from savings you can spare, or a documented payment from a partner is cleaner than a same-day round trip. If the terms say the money must be paid in, they rarely say it must stay for a year. They also rarely invite games.
Ten Card Payments Is A Smaller Job Than It Sounds
Ten transactions a month is not ten shopping trips. It can be a coffee, a bus fare, a supermarket shop split across two taps, a pharmacy, a newsagent. The risk is not effort. The risk is concentration. If you put the weekly shop on a credit card for points, and you pay rent by bank transfer, your debit card can sit quiet. Quiet cards do not earn engagement rewards.
Pending is the other trap. A hotel deposit, a fuel station pre-authorisation, a food delivery that has not settled: these can look like transactions in the app and still fail the test. I would keep a simple note for the first two months. Date, merchant, whether it cleared. Fussy, yes. Cheaper than missing £30 because you trusted a spinning icon.
A rough engagement check: Week 1: move small regular spends onto the new debit card Week 2: confirm at least five have cleared, not just authorised Week 3: fill any gap with ordinary purchases you would make anyway Week 4: stop, count cleared items, do not invent spend
Do not buy things you do not need in order to hit ten. That is how a £30 reward costs £40. The point of the exercise is to relocate spending you already do.
Branches, Apps And The Life You Actually Live
A bonus does not replace a counter. If you still pay in cash, sort a bereavement, or want a human to look at a cheque, the branch map matters more than the switching table. Industry tallies put this bank’s branch cuts since 2015 at 1,236 closures, the steepest reduction of any individual lender in the country. It has also said it plans to open three new branches this year. Three openings against more than a thousand closures is not a reversal. It is a footnote.
I am not romantic about branches. Plenty of people have not stepped into one since contactless became normal. If that is you, the closure story is noise. If your parent still banks in person, or you run a small stall that deals in cash, the noise is the whole decision. Check the branch you would actually use, not the one in a city you visit twice a year.
The app requirement on the standard offer is a quiet filter. Opening through the app assumes a smartphone, a working login, and comfort with digital identity checks. That is fine for most applicants under 60 and a real barrier for some over 75. A market-leading bonus that you cannot start without an app is not universal. Call that what it is.
Savings Rates Are A Separate Decision
People bundle this badly. They switch the current account and then leave £15,000 sitting in the linked easy-access pot because it feels tidy. Tidy can be expensive. The bank’s easy-access range has been quoted between 1% and 3.96%. Cash ISAs have sat between 1% and 4.55%. Fixed bonds have reached up to 4.55%. Elsewhere, the best savings accounts on the open market have been paying more than 5%.
You do not have to keep savings with the same name on the debit card. That sentence is worth more than most switching bonuses if the balance is large. On £20,000, a one percentage point gap is £200 a year, before tax. Two points is £400. The £300 standard bonus can be eaten by a sleepy savings rate in a little over a year. The £600 Premier bonus lasts longer, but it is still a one-off. Rate gaps compound.
There is a wrinkle if you are using the £100,000 savings route to qualify for Premier. Parking that money with them may be the price of entry. Once the bonus is secured and any minimum-balance period has passed, you can ask whether the cash still needs to stay. Do not move it on day two and then act surprised if a condition breaks. Sequence matters.
Tax, Protection And The Boring Safety Questions
The bank’s line is that neither the switch cash nor the monthly engagement rewards are subject to UK income tax. Switching incentives are often treated differently from interest, which is why the claim shows up so confidently. I still would not build a tax return on a marketing page. If you are near a threshold, or you file under a complicated set of reliefs, ask whoever does your return. A £600 bonus is not worth a letter you did not expect.
Protection is the other quiet question. UK deposits at a bank sit under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to the prevailing limit, which most people still think of as £85,000 per person per authorised firm. Joint accounts generally double that. If you are moving a large pay-in just to clear a bonus hurdle, do not leave six figures idle in a current account out of laziness. Clear the hurdle, then put surplus cash where the rate and the licence make sense.
Overdrafts deserve a look too. A full switch can move an overdraft arrangement, or it can refuse to. If you rely on a buffer, confirm the new limit before the old account closes. Losing a £1,000 facility to chase a £150 bonus is a bad trade if the facility is what keeps the month standing.
Who Should Probably Leave This Offer Alone
Not every unhappy customer should move. Some should, and some will make their life harder for £30 a month. A short refusal list is more useful than another cheer.
- You cannot hit the pay-in. No salary landing, no spare savings, no realistic transfer. Stop here.
- You do not have enough direct debits and cannot create genuine ones in time.
- You already failed a “new customer” test because of a linked brand.
- You need a nearby branch and the nearest one closed in 2019.
- Your current account waives a packaged insurance or a mortgage rate that the bonus does not replace.
- You are mid-mortgage application and a new current account will clutter the bank statements your broker just collected.
- You will not use the debit card ten times a month and you are only excited by the full headline number.
That seventh point is the one I would underline. If you will happily take £150 or £450 and ignore the rest, fine. If you will feel short-changed unless every pound arrives, be honest about your card habits before you apply. Self-knowledge is an eligibility criterion nobody prints.
A Sensible Order Of Work If You Do Switch
I like a sequence that assumes something will go slightly wrong, because something usually does. Start by listing every direct debit and standing order, including the annual ones you forget. Note which are essential in the next 30 days. Council tax and energy do not care that you are mid-switch.
Then check eligibility in plain language. Income, savings location, previous relationship with the group, app access. If Premier is a maybe, do not open the standard account first and hope to upgrade into the bigger bonus. Offers are usually attached to the account you open, not the account you wish you had opened.
Open the account the way the offer demands. For the standard deal, that means the app. Set the switch date with a little air around payday if payday is your pay-in. Tell your employer the new details even though the redirect should catch stray salary payments. Employers are slow. Redirects expire. Belt and braces is not paranoia when the sum is £5,000.
After the switch completes, audit. Three direct debits or two, depending on the offer. Pay-in visible and cleared. Card in your wallet, old card cut up only once you are sure nothing still needs it. Then run the five-month card rhythm without turning it into a sport.
Switch sanity check: eligibility + full switch + direct debits + pay-in + cleared card spend = bonus pathKeep the confirmation emails. If a reward does not appear, you will want dates, not a feeling. Banks are not villains about this, but they are large, and large organisations pay on rules, not on your memory of an advert.
Joint Accounts, Partners And Awkward Conversations
Money offers get personal fast. A Premier threshold of £75,000 can sit with one partner while the household account is joint. Does the income test look at you, or at both of you? Often it looks at the applicant. That can mean one person qualifies and the other does not, which is a strange thing to explain over pasta. I have seen couples split the switch: one moves a sole account for the bonus, the joint account stays put so the mortgage direct debit never wobbles. That can work. It can also create a month where nobody is sure which card pays the nursery.
Talk about the branch question too. One of you may be fine with an app. The other may want a counter for a reason they have not said out loud. A £300 bonus does not heal that difference. It just reveals it on a deadline.
If you are separating, pause. Switching a joint account during a split is how direct debits get weaponised by accident. Bonuses are optional. A clean financial break is not. Wait until names, standing orders and responsibility are dull and agreed.
What The Perks Are Worth If You Price Them Honestly
Let us price the extras without romance. Apple TV at £9.99 a month is about £120 a year if you would have subscribed. If you would not, it is £0. Fee-free foreign spending is worth the markup you avoid, which on a ordinary debit card can be a few percent plus a cash fee. A two-week trip spending £1,500 could save something like £40 to £60, sometimes more if you take cash out. Useful. Not life-changing. Exclusive mortgage rates only matter if you are actually borrowing, and exclusive does not always mean cheapest once fees are in the comparison.
Cashback on spending is the classic fog. A half percent back on £500 a month is £2.50. Nice. Invisible next to a £450 switch payment. Do not let a cashback banner do the deciding.
The wealth conversation is different. If you already have £150,000 to invest and you want a named human, the planner access might be the real product, with the bonus as a sweetener. If you do not, ignore that line. It is not aimed at you, and pretending otherwise wastes an evening.
A Worked Example For A Standard Switch
Take a salaried reader on £42,000. Premier is out. The standard offer is in, assuming they are a new customer under the rules. They open in the app on a Sunday night. They set the switch for the following week. Two direct debits move: mobile phone and contents insurance. They were going to add a third, a charity payment, but two is enough, so they leave the charity where it is rather than invent admin.
Payday lands £2,400. That clears the £2,000 pay-in with room to spare. They move £1,800 straight back to a savings account paying more than the current account ever will. The bonus terms did not require the money to holiday there for six months. They keep a working balance.
Card spend is the part they nearly fluff. Week one they forget and use the old credit card. Week two they put groceries, a train ticket, a pharmacy run and lunch on the new debit card. By month end they have twelve cleared payments. £30 is scheduled. They repeat, not perfectly, for five months. Total in: £150 plus £150. Time cost: a few evenings and a milder irritation when one direct debit needed a phone call. Net, for them, a good trade.
Change one fact and it sours. Suppose payday is £1,600 and they have no savings to top up the pay-in. The offer fails before the card habit starts. Suppose they are remortgaging and the new account delays a statement their lender wanted. The £300 is suddenly expensive. Examples are not promises. They are a way to see your own month more clearly.
A Worked Example On The Premier Side
Now take someone on £90,000 with investments elsewhere. Income clears the gate. They do not need to shift £100,000 across, which matters, because those investments are in a wrapper they do not want to disturb. They open Premier, run a full switch, move three direct debits, and pay in a salary that covers £5,000 without theatre.
They travel twice a year. Fee-free foreign spend until September 2027 has a real value for them, maybe £80 a year. They already pay for Apple TV, so the subscription is a genuine saving. They will never meet the £150,000 portfolio test for a wealth manager, and they know it. The bonus is the prize. The perks are a pleasant side plate.
Their risk is boredom. Month three, they are abroad and using a credit card for protection on hotels. Debit transactions drop to six. That month’s £30 does not arrive. They are not robbed. They are just £30 lighter than the advert. Over five months they might land £120 of the £150. Still a strong outcome. Not the round number they told their group chat.
Timing, Expiry And The October Squeeze
Offers end. One rival’s £240 standard deal was scheduled to close on 7 October, the same day this Barclays push was being written up. That kind of clustering is normal in autumn, when banks want salary mandates before Christmas spending. If you are comparing, compare live pages, not a table you saved. I have been caught by a “still on” assumption more than once. The form closes, the page stays cached in your head, and you apply to a ghost.
There is also a personal timing question. Switching in the middle of a house purchase is rarely worth it. Underwriters like stable bank statements. A brand-new account with a fat incoming transfer and a bonus credit can prompt a question. Answerable, yes. Convenient, no. If completion is eight weeks away, wait. The next bonus season will come. Property chains do not.
Year-end can be awkward for another reason. Direct debit dates bunch in December and January. A switch that straddles that bunch needs extra checking. Missing a council tax payment because a mandate moved a day late is a very expensive way to earn £150.
Service, Complaints And What You Are Really Buying
A switching bonus is a bribe to ignore inertia. Inertia is sometimes rational. If your current bank answers the phone, refunds a fraud claim without a saga, and does not freeze the account every time you buy a train ticket abroad, that service has a price. I cannot tell you the price. You can. If the last fraud claim took six weeks and three letters, £300 looks like compensation you are paying yourself.
Look at how you actually contact them. App chat, phone, branch, secure message. A gorgeous bonus does not fix a two-hour hold if you are the sort of person who needs the hold. Conversely, if you have not called a bank in four years, service quality is a story you are telling yourself. Switch, take the cash, keep your standards for the day something breaks.
Fraud tools are worth a minute. Confirmation of payee, card controls, the ability to freeze in the app: these are table stakes now, but the quality varies. A bank that texts you about a £4 test transaction and ignores a £900 one is not a bank you want holding the salary. Read recent customer comments with a filter for recency. A complaint from 2018 is archaeology.
The Foreign Spend Date Is Easy To Forget
27 September 2027 is specific enough to respect. Premier’s fee-free spend abroad runs until then, not indefinitely. If your main reason for the black card is travel, put the date somewhere you will see it in summer 2027. After that, you may want a separate travel card again. Building your whole holiday system around a perk with an end date is how people get stung in arrivals halls.
Cash withdrawals abroad are a different animal from card purchases. Fee-free spending does not always mean fee-free cash. ATM operators abroad add their own charges. Dynamic currency conversion, the button that offers to charge you in pounds, remains a bad button. None of that is unique to this bank. It is just where travel perks go to die if you tap yes without reading.
How I Would Decide In An Evening
If I were doing this for my own household, I would give it one evening, not a research project. First pass: can we qualify, Premier or standard? Second pass: can we hit pay-in and direct debits without contortions? Third pass: what do we lose by leaving, in branches, in a linked savings rate we actually use, in a mortgage relationship? Fourth pass: will we run ten cleared card payments without fake spending?
If those four pass, I would switch and I would not overthink the brand. Current accounts are plumbing. The water should arrive, the leaks should be fixed, and if someone pays you to change the pipes, take the money when the pipes are equivalent. If any of the four fail, I would stay and feel no guilt. Missing a bonus is not a character flaw.
If you are unhappy with the bank you have, a switching offer can be a clean reason to move. Just be sure you will meet the requirements, and that the cash is worth more than the perks you are leaving behind.
Consumer finance editor
That advice is plainer than the adverts, which is why it holds up. Happiness with a bank is a low bar and a real one. Some people are not unhappy. They are bored. Boredom is a weak reason to move three direct debits and retrain your wallet. Irritation, fees, a closed branch, a fraud experience that still stings: those are stronger.
Small Print Habits That Save The Bonus
A few habits separate people who collect these offers from people who almost do. They screenshot the terms on the day they apply. They note the exact pay-in figure and the exact direct debit count. They do not rely on a comparison site’s summary once the application has started. They assume pending card payments are invisible until they clear. They do not switch a second account in the same month unless they enjoy chaos.
They also read the definition of a new customer twice. Existing savings can count as a relationship. A closed account from a few years ago can count. A credit card with the same group can count. The definitions are not consistent across the market, which is annoying and also the entire game. If a sentence feels ambiguous, that ambiguity will not be resolved in your favour by wishful reading.
And they keep the old bank’s app installed until the redirect period is clearly doing its job. Cutting every tie on day one is tidy and occasionally foolish. A stray payment needs a home. Give it one.
What This Does Not Fix In Your Wider Money
A switching bonus will not retire you. It will not repair a budget that leaks £400 a month. It will not outrun a savings rate you have ignored. I like these offers because they are one of the few times personal finance pays you for an admin task with a finish line. I dislike them when they become a hobby that distracts from the larger leaks: unused subscriptions, a cash ISA paying 1% when 4% is available, a credit card revolving at a painful rate.
If you take the £300 or the £600, give the money a job the day it arrives. Emergency fund, a bill you were going to finance, a pension top-up if the rules allow, a debt balance. Leaving it in the current account to “see” is how bonuses evaporate into groceries you cannot remember. The bank paid you to switch. You can pay yourself by not letting the payment dissolve.
There is a wider market point too. Banks fund these offers because current accounts are sticky and because salary payments are the start of a relationship they can cross-sell. You are allowed to take the incentive and refuse the cross-sell. A mortgage conversation, an investment pitch, a packaged account upgrade: none of that is mandatory because you accepted £150. Polite no is a complete sentence.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Tap Apply
Will this account be my main account or a sidecar? Sidecars can still qualify if the switch is full and the pay-in is real, but a sidecar you forget will fail the card test. Is anyone else named on the old account, and have they agreed? Does the old account hold a payment I cannot miss in the next fortnight? Is my ID current enough for an app check? Do I know where the nearest remaining branch is, even if I hope not to need it?
What happens to my overdraft? What happens to linked savings that earn a loyalty rate only while the current account stays open? Some older accounts carry a quirk rate that dies on closure. I have seen people give up 3% on a small legacy pot to chase a bonus, which was fine, and I have seen people give up a genuinely rare rate, which was not. Know which one you have.
Finally, ask what “done” looks like. For me it would be: switch complete, hurdles met, card habit running, surplus cash not dozing in the current account, and a note in the diary for month five so the engagement rewards do not fade out of attention. That is unglamorous. Unglamorous is how the money arrives.
So, Is It The Best Deal On The Table?
On the numbers being advertised, yes. Premier at £600 leads the Premier pack. The standard account at £300 leads the ordinary pack, ahead of a £240 offer that was ending, and ahead of several £200 and £175 deals from familiar names. Leading the table is not the same as fitting your life. The Premier lead is irrelevant if you earn £50,000 and your savings live somewhere else. The standard lead is irrelevant if you cannot open in the app or cannot show two direct debits.
I would call it the best headline, not an automatic best move. The monthly structure means you only hold the full amount after about six months of behaving like a customer they wanted. That is a fair exchange if the account is otherwise fine. It is a poor exchange if you are gritting your teeth through ten card payments in a bank you already dislike.
Take the cash if the gates open and the account does the job. Leave it if the gates are theatre. And keep your savings rate conversation separate from your switching conversation. Those are different piles of money, even when the logo on the card wants them to feel like one.
One last practical note. Offers of this size pull in a crowd, and application checks slow down when the crowd arrives. If you are eligible and the terms still match what you need, waiting for a perfect Monday rarely helps. Start the eligibility read tonight. The £600 and the £300 are both real. They are just not casual.
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