Last night I was trying to transfer some money from my INGDirect on-line banking account, and noticed their 5.65% p.a. 90 days term deposit. That’s 0.25% above the regular INGDirect Savings Maximiser. Not bad.

Later on Vivian asked about it, and we went back to their website and cannot find the same deal from their product pages! Their term deposits have longer term (1+ years) with only 5.45%-5.55% p.a. interest rate. So I went back to the on-line banking interface, trying to remember where I saw the banner ads previously… And figured out that the 5.65% p.a. 90 days term deposit banner ad will only be displayed when you try to transfer money away from INGDirect! Not when you try to display transactions, not when you try to transfer money to them – only after you select the option that you want to withdraw.

What a tactic.

Nevertheless, we still applied the term deposit as 5.65% seems to be a good deal, and ING has easy to use interface, good customer service, etc. I know that there are a few other banks that gives better 90 days rate than INGDirect. Besides previous bad experience with BankWest, I guess I am just too lazy to move money around.