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Comment by ragingrobot | Hacker News Reader

Right before the 2008 downturn, I had an ING Direct (now Capital One) savings account, at that time with an APR over 8. At once point in the early 2000s it was doing a hell of a lot better than that.

It never recovered. I never saw that rate go above 1% ever since.

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A lot of other online banks did the same. They were essentially paying to acquire customers. 8% was not a typical interest rate in savings accounts at that time.

Not unlike promotional rates at other types of subscription-like businesses that offer great rates to pull you in, hoping you’ll stay after the promotional period ends because of the inconvenience of switching.

I’ve had that same account. You got duped by Capital One, as this account was a “Savings” Account, but then they introduced a new “Performance Savings” account years back. The Performance account has competitive yields (top of market 2.5% few years back) but they got to milk customers who just stayed on existing “Savings” accounts that didn’t realize the yields were way too low. Getting the higher yield was as simple as a few buttons online to open the account and transfer money, same interface and everything.

That was particularly annoying though because the new product did not support joint accounts whereas the old one did

It is a well known sales tactic to hook customers in then lower interest rates. Whomever does not fall into this trend will gain consumers' trust

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