The Scarborough Building Society has been attracting a bit of criticism over it’s incentives for people taking out mortgages. They are currently offering £2,600 worth of electronic goods, including iPods, an iMac, digitial camera etc. They had previously offered a plasma TV as an incentive earlier in the year.
All sounds very tempting, until you do your sums and find out that you’d be better off getting a mortgage deal elsewhere and buying the stuff seperately. A simple question for the Scarborough B.S. is why not reduce your £595 fee or lower your interest rate rather than offering these incentives?
No doubt there will still be a fair few people who are blinded by the offer and go for it based on the incentive though. For them to be trying a similar thing again you suspect it must have worked for them before.