A Thread on American Banking Options That Don't Suck a Caribou's Ass

ah ok i should have just said "brokerage account" not "savings account" before, but i didn't want to sound snooty

wtf @ people in america being worried about ATMs... no one uses cash in nz, we have the almighty EFTPOS!

still not sure which bank i should go with when i move to US. credit card fees seem a lot lower over there - like, HALF of what most credit card interest rates are in nz - so that is upside.

wtf @ people in america being worried about ATMs... no one uses cash in nz, we have the almighty EFTPOS!

still not sure which bank i should go with when i move to US. credit card fees seem a lot lower over there - like, HALF of what most credit card interest rates are in nz - so that is upside.

Somewhere upthread someone said something about being charged for debit card transactions over a certain ludicrously small minimum every month. US banks be a bunch of anti-deluvian troglodyte fraudsters as far as I can see.

In the UK they try and encourage debit card usage seeing cash as an unnecessary and expensive. Luckily they didn't manage to put in widespread withdrawal fees on bank owned ATMs a few years back although the number of bank owned ones seems to be going down and the number of bodega style ones and fee paying ones disguised as bank owned ATMs seems to be on the rise.

69's points about watching your bank like a hawk are OTFM8080, I'd add to that to switch at the drop of a hat if the fuck you around. The only reasons banks fuck us around is because we are all to lazy to punish them for bad service by taking our custom elsewhere.

Also, you might as well surf the introductory deals that are a consequence of our laziness.

there are pretty much no charges for debit card/EFTPOS use here; most banks offer a fee-free deal. pretty much the only place i can't use my debit card is the bus - a lot of taxis even have EFTPOS machines now. but i do pay around 21% p.a. on my credit card.

Ruby, a quick look at http://www.interest.co.nz/creditcards.asp says you're bonkers - you're probably seeing advertisements for US credit cards giving an introductory APR of around 9 or 10%? shit is all damned lies

really? jordan pays (i think) less than 10% on his credit cards... maybe i need to ask him about it again. i'm no good at this stupid money stuff! ;_; i need to get rich so i don't have to think about it.

i should switch to kiwibank - it's our new nz-owned bank (the only one left) since their interest rate is 13.3% but seems pointless now, and i pay my cc regularly so i get charged fuck all interest.

hey ed, is there any difficulty in getting US credit card, being a foreigner, or are they just gagging to send us into debt?

It is pretty difficult to get a us credit card if you don't have some kind of presence in the US. The best you can do is find one that doesn't shaft you for overseas usage. Amex doesn't for us transactions but for non us transaction (and not your own currency) you get double hit by two currency conversions at not too favourable rates.

Some banks in the uk pride themselves on zero fees for overseas transactions (some hit you in the exchange rate, some don't).

I've just signed up for citi account which gives me US and euro denominated current accounts with debit and credit linked to them which should minimise fees.

If you are paying balances off in full every month then you should have a credit card that gives you something for that (cashback, airmiles, sexual favours, charity donations) otherwise you are overpaying. I keep two credi cards, one that I pay off every month, which I use for business expenses, mainly, on which I get airmiles and one low rate card I use for emergencies, large purchases I need to spread etc. If it has a balance on it I try and make sure I shift it to a zero introductory rate to pay it down. This is becoming harder to do due to the credit crunch and the fact that my credit rating shows me not to make much money for the banks because I am not a profligate debt spender.

bank of internet!

Do any Chicagoans know of any credit unions whose eligibility requirement is simply "live in Chicago/Cook County"? Bank of America and US Bank have both pulled some pretty annoying shit and I'm done with it.

no fucking chintzy debit-card surcharge when I'm stuck using the damn thing at Stop & Shop because I forgot my credit card @ home

Um, you don't get this surcharge if you have a MC/Visa check card and you use it as credit. At least, you don't get it with BoA. ALWAYS use your debit card as credit.

Unfortunately the credit uses don't post as quickly, so you might check yr balance at an ATM and not realize that something from last week hasn't been deducted yet! I know this is slightly sloppy but still, potentially dangerous for overdrafts.

I actually started using my ATM card as debit all the time because it posts and is deducted immediately. Have not noticed surcharges but maybe I'm not looking closely enough...?

some banks do make you pay a POS (point of sale) surcharge for using it as debit rather than sending it through as a credit. for reasons I can't remember now; it has to do with who pays for the transaction I think. weirdly the reason seemed totally backward to me when it was explained to me. both my banks finally got rid of this surcharge though.

yes it is a good idea to run stuff through as credit, that way you are protected by MC/VISA return policies which will credit you back if something is wrong! I guess not as big a deal if you're buying a loaf of bread, but if you're buying a TV or something it might be.

i think i'm gonna get a wamu credit card cos they are offering 0 apr deals and will transfer over my boa balance. boa sucks for charging a credit protection fee that the claimed came over when the merged with mbna but i never signed up for that shit. still the refuse to take it off. i just need to get rid of this card.

Um, you don't get this surcharge if you have a MC/Visa check card and you use it as credit. At least, you don't get it with BoA. ALWAYS use your debit card as credit.

Dammit, I think you're right. I just selected debit because, duh, that's what it was. Still, it's balls in an unwashed jock, that stuff.

I have been sucking the combined caribous arses of RBS and citibank who apapparntly aren't best fwends and can't transfer my direct debits from one to the other in less than 3 months (the banking code of practice says this should take 5 days).

I'm spoiled by USAA.

^^^^^this. And since they added Deposit@home last year, letting you just deposit paper checks via your own scanner, it's like FU ALL OTHER BANKS. I do my banking + car and homeowner's insurance through USAA. Can't imagine going anywhere else.

I am loving my ING Orange account that was suggested here.

this seems appropriate timing for revivotron

indeed

I'm going to hold out until they're sucking a panda bear's spermy nutsack.

i'm going local, in part

Time to revive again as I need one. Options:

Citi

Pros I have a UK citi account with a dollar balance and can transfer stuff instantly between citi accoutns for free (think I can transfer to other US banks for free but it takes time)
Probably won't go bust
GF has an account with them

Cons
Very little presence in pittsburgh so ATM charges
Upthread people don't rate their customer service experience
charges for almost everything it seems

Citizen's bank

Pros
All over pittsburgh
fewer charges than citi
probably won't go bust as owned by RBS

Cons
have promised never to give RBS another penny as long as I live

Charles Schwab

Pros
Free checking,
refund ATM fees
good interest on balances

Cons
No idwa whether they will go bust
no branches

Anyone else I should be looking at?

wamu/chase may be keeping their 5% 12 month cd open until interest rates drop again.

now you're all awake, save me from sweet tasty caribou

dude there are lots of banks. just pick one and stop being a wuss about it. you're insured for 250,000 or soon will be. ride the mechanical bull with the rest of us. why would you even think about using charles schwab for your bank, though?????

they refund all ATM charges, don't charge for checking, someone recommended it up thread

For those not tracking my life story, I recently moved from the UK to the US and opened an account with Wells Fargo (the guy there nearly left mine and my husband's SURNAMES off the accounts until I suggested it might be useful to record).

Online banking is OK, but it doesn't seem like you can transfer money to people's accounts if they're not with Wells Fargo. This can't be right, right? In the UK you can transfer money to anyone electronically (NOT wiring) because it's exactly the same as writing them a cheque. Soemtimes it even goes in the same day!

Is this a US thing or a Wells Fargo thing? We can't seem to do Direct Debits, presumably for this reason. (We wanted to set one up to pay our landlord that lives below us. They offered to do this automatic bill payment thing that automatically prints a cheque and posts it to the person . I mean, what.)

So anyway we want to send money back to the UK and want to use a currency exchange broker. But it looks like we'd need to transfer money electronically and as they're not a Wells Fargo account holder we can't do it.

Any and all advice welcome.

yeah I have citibank, was recently in the same position and couldn't figure out a way to do it without wiring. and the other person even had a citibank account...

that seems really strange. if you'd be ok with an online-only checking account you might try this http://home.ingdirect.com/products/products.asp?s=ElectricOrange
i have their savings account. the interest is low but it's really easy to transfer in and out of my checking account (which is not ING) without fees or anything.

Bank of America is similar to Wells Fargo on this - I can transfer to another BofA account but when I tried to set up a Chase account for transfers/bill payer I got an email back saying they couldn't do it "for security reasons". I used Paypal instead, which is slower but didn't require anyone physically going to a branch/finding a stamp to mail a check.

???

Never had any problems doing wire transfers with Bank of America.

Not wire transfers - direct electronic payments from a BofA acct to another personal bank acct, that you set up through the online bill payer service.

The major consumer banks are all restricting the hell out of ACH transfers from account-to-account because trojan keylogger operators have switched from "carding" to stealing online bank credentials and just flat-out no-kidding emptying accounts. Some small businesses & associations have been taken for the large six figures via fraudulent ACH transfers -
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/small_business_victims/

NACHA - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House - just recently released a bulletin to participants recommending add'l risk controls to be put in place:
http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid185_gci1376711,00.html

But for all that frankly "printing the check and mailing it" has worked wonders for me over the years - it's how I paid my rent from day one in my old apartment, I've used it to pay one-off medical bills, make charity donations and transfer money back and forth with my parents even. Knowing someone's mailing address isn't THAT hard.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/nov/16/money-mule-scam

Thanks, that's interesting, although I don't understand why this isn't a problem in Europe? Do you know of any consumer banks that will allow transfers between banks or is it a blanket thing?

This has become a major asspain in trying to manage finances across two continents. I can mail myself a cheque to my dollar account in london which has to be mailed back by the bank to clear taking about a month or suffer paypal's fees for something that used to be a click away. I appreciate the banks concerns but it seems like this is hard to do now even if I go into the back branch with ID and try and get the transfer initiated from there.

Other than this PNC does not seem to suck caribou ass, i guess I haven't tested them too hard but on the plus side they refund all ATM fees, which is nice given that I feel that a $5 atm fee can't be far in my future.

Wells Fargo will save you from an abusive relationship with your cat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnAfB8P53MI