I do a majority of our banking with Fifth Third. They have a branch near our house, they have easy to use systems, and they’ve been very good to work with over the years since we combined accounts prior to getting married.
I’ve been pretty pleased with them regarding various fees that I’ve seen other banks charge. They never started trying to charge us for our ‘Free Checking’ or charging us for any sort of transactions, things that I’ve seen other banks try to slip in, so I thought they were keeping their heads above those game.
Until I looked more closely at our accounts.
We have a checking account and also a savings account. Truth be told, I’m not sure exactly why the savings account is there. It’s linked for overdraft protection, but as it only pays 0.1% interest (or maybe less), we only keep a couple of hundred bucks in it.
I was matching our balances against our net worth statement and I noticed that the online balance was showing $10 less than what it should have had.
Not good.
So, I clicked into the detail and saw that I had been charged two $5 ‘Maintenance Fee’ charges over the past two months. No further detail was available.
I called our local branch and had someone look into it, and he explained that since there hadn’t been any activity on the account in over 12 months, a ‘Dormant’ fee kicks in. I asked what you have to do to keep it active and he sheepishly said that you just had to do something involving at least $1.
I asked if that meant I could just transfer a dollar between accounts and he said, yes, that would work. I asked if he could reverse the charges and he said he could. I went on and I transferred a dollar from the account over to the checking account.
Now I just have to set a reminder to do that again every 11 months or so.
I’ve never heard anything like it. I have money sitting there but you’re going to charge me $5 because I’m not using it? Is this common?
I guess it could be worse. I guess they could have just started charging the account for just existing or refused to reverse the charges.
Still, talk about things that make no sense! What’s next?!?
What kind of fees have you run into with your bank?
Update: It turns out there was actually a different reason we were being assessed this charge.
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I have seen these fees before. It is a way to make money off of someone who they aren’t getting transaction fee money from. If someone forgets about a $100 account they will have it in 20 months and by then it is too late. I would probably close the savings account rather than deal with the hassle if it procures no value to you.
Lance@MoneyLife&More recently posted..Carnival Cruise Price Protection Saved Me $160
Very true, the balance will eventually get so low that people will just figure it’s not worth it altogether. Still, seems sneaky.
I’ve run into something similar with US Bank. They’ve started charing activity fees for $6.95 per month. You can get that waived if you have a direct deposit or keep a average daily balance (which is figured with some long drawn out formula) of some amount. We’ve banked with them for about 15 years and have never been charged a fee. I noticed they charged the fee to me last month and I had to call it in to be waived. Thankfully they did. We have multiple accounts with them and since we run our own business we don’t have direct deposits and our balance can swing quite a bit so we may not meet their requirements. That said, we may be looking for an online bank in the near future to avoid fees.
John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted..Find Financial Safety With an Emergency Fund
You really have to keep on top of them. Had it been the checking account, I certainly would have noticed that as we use it all the time and I check it almost every day. The savings account is rarely checked which I guess is what they’re counting on.
I work for a credit union. We do charge a dormant account fee, but the whole account has to be dormant – no activity in any savings, checking, loan, etc. for 12 months. However we went the extra mile (hopefully) and notify members 90 days before they’d be considered dormant that there’s been no activity in their whole account and that they might incur a fee. But in that letter we let them know what to do to keep their account active. If they stay dormant, we continue to send out reminders each month. I don’t know how banks are regulated, or even if they are, but credit unions have to follow guidelines and let their members know about fees like this. I love my credit union – and not just because I work at one.
I’ve never heard of this before…maybe it’s different in Canada though or something I have yet to run into? I recently switched from one of our so called ‘Big 5′ banks to a no-fee bank after realizing how much in bank fees I was paying every month (30-50/month) and so far very happy with them.
Catherine recently posted..Taking Over Someone Else’s Finances?
I’m sure if it’s legal, you’ll hear of it soon