Switching banks – how much would it take?

Is the hassle worth the Bonus cash?

 

There are a lot of opportunities to get some bonus nearly-cash freebies – everything from buying a car at a certain time, to signing up for a credit card during a promo, and then banks trying to get new customers. I took advantage of a good sign up deal at Meridian when they opened across the street and scored a bunch of extra money (in the form of interest %) for just putting what I was already holding as savings into a different bank at the right time.

 

My hubby and I decided to try and cash in (HAH!, get it?) on BMO bank offer to “switch banks and we’ll give you cash!”.  We wanted to open up a joint account somewhere anyways, so this was a good opportunity to jump on a free money deal. We set an appointment with the Manager to sign up…

 

 

Now the rest of this post is more of a rant/opinion. I wanted to post it as a reminder that not all that glitters is gold, and to weigh what could go wrong with something before jumping headlong into it.

 

After a lot of just “getting to know us” and credit score checking, we were handed a full page of details about how we get free money. This included and bunch of “must-do’s” including setting up an automatic deposit, getting a new credit card, paying that credit card bill, etc. All of these items had to be completed by a certain date. Seemed easy enough! We went throught the sign up process for a totally JOINT account on the middle plan (saying we would get $250 if we did everything), got a new credit card for each of us and left feeling pretty confident. Our first to-do checkmark was making a deposit, which we did before we left that day of our wedding gift money.

 

 

Cue the problems...

-          Immediately, the new BMO debit cards have had issue after issue. We were hit-and-miss with whether it worked somewhere or not, but it would work up to the point of then saying declined. That’s a horrible feeling when you actually do have money. We complained and they sent us new cards. My husband is on card #4 now, and I’ve stopped using mine entirely. Stores around us like Swiss Chalet still have notice on their doors that they do not accept the new BMO debit cards 

-          We found out very quickly that “Joint account” at BMO does not mean that. Someone on the account has to be “main” or something, we still don’t understand, but basically my husband can do basic things like paying a bill or seeing HIS credit card balance. He cannot make changes, see “my” credit cards balance to make a payment, and he can’t talk about the account without me around. This has been incredibly frustrating.. Mostly because we don’t understand why 

-          We needed to have printed documents for a lawyer saying what we had in all of our bank accounts. This was not easily done as my husband couldn’t print the screen I can see which shows chequing and three credit card balances. I had to “order” the printout and have it put in an envelope for pickup by my husband

-          While paying bills somehow we paid one credit card amount to the wrong card. I called to try and find out how to switch the credit on one card to pay the other card and it is a “cash advance”. They cannot immediately credit me the charge for this, so have to call them back in the next month to have it refunded (hoping the whole time the “note” he has put on the account is indeed there)

At one point we started worrying that we hadn’t checked off all the boxes on the to-do lists. My husband went to the bank on three different occasions and was told something different each time.. usually starting with “no clue”. I kept trying to call the Manager we had signed up with but no answer. My husband emailed her a few times too, again with no response. 

Finally, we got a hold of the Manager. She said she would send us the printout again so we could see if we checked everything off. She (and basically BMO in general) couldn’t tell us whether we checked all the boxes. We were told by one of the people at the bank on one of my husband’s visits that the deadline for doing everything was December, so I was concerned that I wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. She informed us that actually, no, the deadline was August! All that stress and hassle with the company, and we might have missed something because we were told the wrong deadline!

 

Fast forward to now and we received the money, so we had done everything on time, thank goodness. But as I stare at the free money, I wonder if the hassle was worth it?

 

Basically 6 months of annoyances and not being able to use a debit card where our money was seems like we should have been paid more, especially if this had actually been my sole bank account. I cheated and still kept my other bank account with a working bank card and all my bill payees intact, but had I not had this I would have been totally dependent on the faulty BMO cards and customer service. If this had been the case, the money would not have been worth it.

 

As it is though, I think it was worth the aggravation for $250 and hubby and I will now work on switching accounts to somewhere else.. Maybe to TD who has a Switch for $300 offer on right now...