Account inactivity fee | Canadian Tire | Discussion forum

They grabbed ten bucks out of my account for inactivity but that is all I had in it.

Now that the Motive rate is at 1.25% I moved a rather large sum into Canadian Tire but that 10 bucks still irks me.

Well I guess the plus side is I'm getting tons of interest but lesson learned when I move money out I will leave 10 cents in next time because the inactivity fee seems random and made up.

I don't think the inactivity fee is random. The fee is usually something like the lower of $20 or the balance of the account.

For Motive Financial, there's a charge after two, five, and nine years of inactivity of $20, $30, and $40.

Vatox said
How do you have inactive accounts. I know all my FI accounts and those that I don’t use often, I just move in a dollar in January and remove a dollar in December. That covers TFSA accounts too.  

For those FIs that allow it, setting up a permanently recurring transaction that just moves a penny every 3 or 6 months is enough to keep an account classified as active.

Access CU as another example only requires that you log in every 90 days, you don't even have to move the penny

Bill said
Just noticed while I was doing my taxes......I got an annual statement from Cdn Tire and at the beginning of 2020 I happened to still have just under $7 in the savings account and they grabbed it as "account inactivity fee" in Jan/20. Same for spouse, except she had just under $4 so that was sufficient in her case. Nice that their fees are flexible like that!

I guess they can't take out the fee if there is no money in the account. Let us know if you make a deposit and they take the rest of the fee.

mustang said
Anybody know what the definition of "account inactivity" is?

From their T&C
For inactive Accounts:
- after 2 years $20.00
- after 5 years and 9 years $30.00
I would GUESS that no deposits or withdrawals in the specified time period would be inactivity, interest doesn't count?. I make sure one or the other happens in my Tang CHKNG account every 6 months.

Rick, I started filling up the account again in April/20 and they took no further amounts, just the Jan 1/20 $6.95 (actually called) "Dormancy fee". The last transaction had previously been on Jan 2/18, aside from a penny interest earned every month, so looks like it kicked in after 2 years.