I have a line of credit, two accounts, one credit card and an RRSP through the Royal Bank. The line of credit is recent and I have had nothing but issues with it and today just takes the cake.
When it was set up, the understanding I had was: every payday, a set amount would be removed from my account and applied towards the loan. Granted, the paperwork says I only need to pay the interest back and it's due the beginning of each month, but I wanted to pay part of the prinicipal too.
The first blunder was the payment schedule. On the first pay period, the money was not removed until half a week later, causing my account to be overdrawn. I thought I had been mistaken about the pay date, so I was about $20 short of the payment. After playing phone tag with the rep who set up my loan, we sorted out that she had it set up to be one payment per month, on the 16th. WRONG. That got fixed and the payment schedule is on track.
Today I go to deposit a cheque into my account.. and I'm freaking overdrawn AGAIN. I race home, log into my account and see that they have removed my interest payment ON TOP of my set payment. I am freaking furious. This was NEVER discussed with me, and had I known, I would have lowered my principal payment or arranged everything to come out on the same day. I am just so pissed off, and I left a message with the bank rep but of course, she won't get the message until tomorrow and I am at work all day, so I won't have clarification until after 5 p.m.
So.Freaking.Mad.
Due to recent multiple screw-up and shitty customer service, I no longer do any business with the Royal Bank. I chose PC Financial and am still shopping for a decent bricks and mortar bank as back up.
I abandoned the Royal Bank after they nickel and dimed me to death, THEN told me the account I had since I was 12 was being closed because I refused to take them up on one of their superfantasticgetitwhileyoucan accounts...that cost $12+ a month.
I had something like $6 in the account and they sent me a bill for $19 to close it ($25 fee to close the account). I laughed and said good luck getting it out of me, fuckers!
I deal exclusively with ScotiaBank and have never had a problem - even when I lost my bank card while on a cruise, they had a new card ready for me at the next port!
As I say, there's a reason RB has the HIGHEST quarterly profits - They make it off your and my back~!
Fiona, that Royal Bank bullshit about changing my longstanding bank account ( 22 years) to a high fee account was the straw that broke the camel's back. I gave them two months and about eight chances to get their shit together before I tranfered all banking elsewhere.
I am starting to wonder what's going on in the banking industry. I have heard a lot of complaints lately about problems with customer service, particularly relating to loans and credit cards. When we first moved here, we were with a good bank that promptly got merged into a not-so-good one within about nine months. We switched to a credit union and had no problems whatsoever until the past year.
We went through a nightmare mortgage process that resulted in our scrambling to find somewhere to live at the last minute as our closing was delayed. Then we recently got notice that our credit card interest rate was being raised because we use our cards too much! WTF? We have had this card for several years. We've never had a late payment, always pay way more than the minimum, and rarely use that particular card. None of our other cards is maxed out, and we've always paid them on time too. We just recently got approved for a car loan a few months ago from the credit union. But now they think we use too much credit? Why did they approve the car loan (which we got at the A+ credit interest rate) if we are such deadbeats?
I had SB originally and had issues with it, but that might have been due to my bank or the fact that I closed my account with them maybe 15 years ago. I also had a BOM account but wasn't thrilled. I eventually went with CIBC, and have heard great things about TD. You will find that PC has strong links to CIBC so you might find advantages to hook up with them too.
Well, good news on this front. The bank refunded the $100 and the overdraft fee back into my account and it turns out this *was* their mistake. The nice lady who set up my loan has assured me that the payments will now be correct and apply to both interest and principal. The next payment comes out this Friday, so fingers crossed they don't screw it up again!
I'm glad it's somewhat resolved.
I hate banks. It would be nice to find a way not to have to deal with them at all. LOL!
Jen M.
Well being an ex bank employee. My loyalities lie with the banks.
Banks are not stupid. Its the PEOPLE that are in them that are stupid, lol
I am happy for you bellis_coldwine that your issue was resolved and
the mistake was found on their end. Human error in banking can happen at any given time.
Its how they handle it that is annoying, that I will give you.
Due to the ATM's, and on line banking, banks of today have forgotten the meaning of customer service.
I am painfully aware of that fact as well.
Its a shame that traditional values died for the sake of speed.
Everything in this damn world has to be smaller & faster faster faster, and yet they expect service & speed to be together?? It just don't work that way & imo it never will. At least wise not in banking, lol
You either get one or the other, but it can't be both.
Anyway, trust me my fingers
ARE crossed & that no more mistakes are made with your account.
I know you are across the pond, as it were, but when banks decided that they needed to charge for every last little thing, I got mad. And then when the last bank I worked with couldn't figure out that I had moved and had a SNAFU with my ATM card, I moved to a credit union.
While some credit unions around here are starting to act like banks (charging for stupid things), most are very nice. Ours has been VERY helpful about several things. And they encourage having at least some money into a savings account. Love that.
I'm very unhappy with my credit union and am considering switching back to the last bank I was with.
Some are better than others.
Jen M.
I'm with ING Direct, which is an online bank -- ING is out of Netherlands or something like that. I don't care that it's a non-American bank. They don't require minimums in your accounts, they pay interest, and last Christmas they even gave me a rebate for the charges I made using my debit card -- since I use it everywhere, it was quite a sum.
The only weird requirement is that you need an outside account to link to it. I don't know why. But in any case, I got a no-minimum, no-fee checking account at a local bank, which I use when I want to write paper checks (ING doesn't do paper checks at all, but they have online bill pay, and will mail a check on your behalf to anyone). I transfer money from my ING account to the local bank, or to my ING savings account, but my primary account in the ING checking.
I haven't had a lick of trouble with it. They even magically refunded $50 that Netbank stole from me for no reason, after they took over Netbank and had their government audit done.
After all the recent bull shit and hassles with the Royal Bank, I have switched to PC Financial a virtual bank ( affiliated with CIBC).
So far- no fees for anything I want to do at all and , no hassles.
I have a savings account with ING, and I have had no problems at all. I was turned down for one of their checking accounts due to my credit troubles, but that's normal.
Jen M.
We got an offer from ING to do a savings account with them and are seriously considering it as they pay way more interest than our credit union. I have my retirement accounts with them already.
DH & I have had the same checking account for over 22 years. At a bank called Ohio Savings. Now called Amtrust as they have a branch out west and they needed a name change.
Well anyway, I have no cause to complain with their service at all.
We get TOTALLY free checking. And I never bounced a check.
In fact a few times the bank made several mistakes in my favor and I was happy to let the mistake sit for 6 months.( totally their error as I am anal about my check book and I go through it with a fine tooth comb and My calculations are always correct)
Then I felt after that time frame the extra $ was mine and I took it, lol
Can you say Ka Ching?
Bank errors in your favor are ALWAYS nice, especially when they don't fix it.
One time, many years ago, however, my then-boyfriend and I discovered something like an extra $3,000 in our joint account. For that, I contacted the bank, even though we could easily have pullled the money out. Why? Because something that big, they will eventually find, and we could have gotten into trouble (maybe with the law, I found out later,) had we kept it.
But yeah. The smaller mistakes are nice.
Jen M.