“interest is calculated daily and paid 12 months after you opened the account”
“sorry - you can’t make partial withdrawals. If you close your account before the end of the 12 month period, we’ll only pay you interest at our standard Savings Account variable rate”
They do mention that it is fixed for 12 months:
sorry - you can’t make partial withdrawals. If you close your account before the end of the 12 month period, we’ll only pay you interest at our standard Savings Account variable rate - Regular Saver Account | first direct
It’s a fair cop, guv, you’ve got be banged to rights and no mistaking.
Fair comment @marcel_w and @CraigR 
Take that out of the equation, my point stands on having to hold lots of money in money just to cover the cost of the packaged account each year.
Nationwide 5% interest on £2,500 fixed for one year
Because it subsidises the cost of what is overall quite poor value packages, making the packages more worthwhile having. It was not about an amazing interest rate.
On that sum:
Monzo early bird offer, net gain: £1.50
(Interest of £37.50 less £36 costs from 12 x £3 early bird offer)
Nationwide net gain: £125.00
Can someone check my maths because even I’m not believing this.
My interpretation of posts here over the last few days is that it was all about the interest rate. And then the promise of cheap mobile phone insurance.
But you make a good point, Rob. It was part of the packaged account, the sum of the collection of poor(ish) products being the attraction.
Which rather goes against the values and ideals of Monzo that I was reading about on this forum over two years ago where they were positioning themselves as being (or wanted in the future to be) the financial hub for customers and helping them find the best products and deals for their circumstances.
In a very short time we’ve gone from what was a really interesting and exciting vision to a position where marketing has taken over and customers are invited to purchase poor value legacy bank type products.
Wasn’t Monzo’s current account interest only on the first £4,000?
Liam, I don’t know. You already have better knowledge than I on that.
It was on £4000 and not £5000 
That’s only a 1 year introductory offer.
I’m interested to see, at some point, what the take-up on the bundles is compared to the previous model.
Watch out!
Bob Carolgees has lost Spit the Dog?
Nothing wrong with your maths but there is some context missing.
Nationwide offer ends 2019-11-09 so can essentially be excluded as an opportunity cost option.
Best easy access on the market is probably 1.45% with Marcus, with no fee this is better than the 1.5% with £36/£72 annual fee but if you’re #fullMonzo you have to keep your bill money and spending money in Monzo so suddenly £x value cannot be transferred to your savings account.
You need to weigh up how much effort you’re willing to put into maximising the easy access saving and whether your running money (£x) not gaining interest makes a difference.
Edit: Marcus rate updated as of 2019-09-08
Many thanks, @swok1080
1.45%
I guess their would be more uptake on insurance polices etc. Overall subscribers would be interesting to see the difference of.
I got the early bird offer thinking I could add insurance on later… well that went to plan 
In my opinion the mistake was having a base fee, it should never of been £3 a month and it should never ever of been £6 a month for basically nothing.
Buying one or two additional products such as insurance should have made you a plus member automatically which then unlocked the different coloured cards, interest etc.
For those that don’t need insurance perhaps they could of had another option to unlock the coloured cards/interest for a monthly fee.
But now they are releasing packaged accounts, call it bundles if you want but they are becoming just like any other bank in this area.
I see the negative reception to these things below. I’ll be slightly less negative. The Traveller option has more goodies in it and is better and more clearly priced. But it’s still got less than Revolut and other competitors, and is £3/mo more.
I don’t think it’s worse (unless people are actually bothered about the 1.5% interest - I would suggest for them it’s better to put the majority of their funds into a dedicated savings/investment account, there are ones with better interest and on-demand access). But it is still not competitive.
Monzo had a strong solution. The banking experience is still solid. But after competitors have appeared in the space Monzo has seemingly lost its ability to compete. It’s playing catchup on features, the extras cost more than competitors, and they offer less.