The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that an epic standard in overpromising and underdelivering was reached when the big banks named their savings accounts. The Globe's Rob Carrick writes that a fine place to start is TD Bank's High Interest Savings Account, which is shown on TD's website as offering an interest rate of "0.000 per cent" on balances below $5,000 and 0.05 per cent on higher amounts. That is not even high if you are high when you read this. Then there is TD's e-Premium Savings Account. Here, you get a reasonable 1.6-per-cent rate on savings of $10,000 and up. Thanks to a tiering system, lower balances get you zero interest. Tiering is also used by Royal Bank of Canada on its RBC Day to Day Savings account. Interest is paid at 0.005 per cent below $1,000 and at 0.1 per cent above that. RBC's High Interest eSavings is the better choice, with an across-the-board rate of 1.5 per cent. However, calling 1.5 per cent high interest is only accurate in comparison with other big-bank offerings. The best rate in savings as of May was the 4.1 per cent paid by Motive Financial, an on-line banking division of Canadian Western Bank. Ontario residents could get 3.6 per cent from Saven Financial.