COMMENT
Beware Of Junk With Flashy Names!

Over the years, I've come up with quite a few rules of thumb that I call "D'Arcy's Laws", which are based on my everyday observations of life.

For example, one of my Laws states, "The louder the car stereo, the trashier the car". My evidence for this is that I've never been blasted by loud music from luxury cars, but this often happens with battered old Vauxhall Novas, for example. Also, have you ever noticed how often someone appears just as you're criticising them? This phenomenon led me to coin another Law (which I developed at great personal cost): "The closer someone's proximity to you, the ruder you are about them."

Several of my Laws have been fleshed out during my long career in financial services, such as the Rule of Three, which explains how some customers pay three times as much for certain products as others do. Anyway, I call the Law that I'd like to describe today my "Precious Metals" or "Mutton Dressed as Lamb" Law. Here it is:

"Financial products labelled Gold, Platinum, Diamond, etc. are generally rubbish."

Clearly, the marketing boffins in financial services have never heard the expression "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear", because they persist in giving fancy-sounding names to inferior products. The thinking behind this marketing-speak is very simple: if you see a product with a flashy name, you immediately assume that it's an upmarket product and don't look beyond the title. Amazingly, millions of customers suspend disbelief and make this assumption.

To back up my Law with a little hard evidence, let's take a look at some savings accounts with showy names. My research last week revealed five Best Buy easy-access savings accounts that pay annual interest rates of over 5%. All of these accounts have dull, boring names, but offer cracking deals to savers. Now let's look at a few of these shiny, golden accounts:

 Other hideous brands to beware of include:

• Advantage
• Classic
• Diamond (plus other gemstones)
• High Interest
• Premium
• Prime
• Select
• Super.

To be quite frank, most accounts with exciting or upmarket adjectives or superlatives in their names are out-and-out rubbish - and risk breaching the Trade Descriptions Act. In this Internet age, you'd earn far more interest in an account with "Online" or "eSaver" in its title.

So, don't go chasing after "Fool's Gold" – use your Foolish sense to find a genuine Best Buy instead!

More: Find a superior account in our Savings centre | Five Ways To Boost Your Savings Account.

Cliff owns shares in HBOS, the Halifax's parent company.