Northern Rock pulls five-year saver after email flood

The Five-Year Fixed Rate Notice Bond (Issue 2), which pays 4%, featured heavily in our Weekly Email this week and was subseqently likely to have to have been swamped wIth interest, which probably caused its unexpectedly short life. The axe fell about 5pm yesterday.

Importantly, anyone who applied before that point will have their application honoured.

Anyone who downloaded a pack to send by post will have the application honoured if the forms arrive by Tuesday morning. However, NR will not give out any more packs.

While the 4% rate is not market-leading over five years, the reason it was highlighted in the MSE email was it allows withdrawals with 180 days' notice with no interest penalty.

By setting it up now, and giving notice in 6 months you could effectively use it as a 4% one-year savings product, smashing the standard best buy at 3.5% (see Top Savings)

In this week's email we warned: "There's a chance Northern Rock will change the terms after huge traffic from this email, so double check."

A Northern Rock spokesman says: "It was a limited issue so once we reached the limit it was pulled. Anyone in the process of applying will have the application honoured."

Martin Lewis, creator of MoneySavingExpert.com, says: "These are the type of deals we love, that we tend to come across every few months.

"This one was originally a great spot from one of our Forum users, we checked it out and it paid off.

"Whenever we put such deals in the email, which now goes to almost six million people, they get drenched in bucket-loads of traffic. So we know, and our users know, once providers realise how people are using them, they'll shut them down at speed. Still, it was good while it lasted."

Further reading/Key links

Best rates: Top Savings, Top Fixed Savings Stay safe: Safe Savings