Are seniors taken advantage of? At Scotiabank for sure! | Page 2 | General comparisons | Discussion forum

I agree it is disgusting how these fees are way too high to be justified by anything. Its not only seniors that are victims.

As interest rates/interest earnings are so low these days and fees are going up, could I suggest we start a listing of no fee/very limited fee banks that people can go to?

Granted it might get complicated as they would have to offer debit cards and also take into account ATM withdrawal fees for those. Interac transfers would have to be possible. It wouldn't matter if they offered credit cards.

Alexandre said
Surprisingly, credit card company was very forgiving when they got a call from us with explanation and apologies, they waived all interest and fees for unpaid balance.

I also blundered when I opened accounts with HSBC. I treated my SAV acct like it was my CHQ acct (because I thought they were the same.) I rang up $60 in transactions fees and called the bank for an explanation. Once I told them of my mis-understanding, they graciously (to their eternal credit) gave me a one-time reversal. Now, I am much more careful with tracking the number of transactions allowed across all my accounts. IOW, it can happen to the best of us. 🙂

I think the OP's mother will need a brick and mortar bank for various needs as she ages and perhaps even a POA in the not too distant future. A straight digital bank won't provide all that she likely needs as an aging senior.

The only real alternatives to the brick and mortar banks (including the likes of CWB) are the local (regional) CUs such as, in the BC Interior, being Prospera CU and Interior Savings. That is likely what keeps these regional CUs going

KamWest said
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It is highway robbery when merchants pay 5 cents a bank can collect $5 dollars on the other end because they are not educating the customer.

Had my dads statement said anywhere on it that these continuing $5 charges were for single debit card transactions he surely would not have done them.

It is very easy to pull the wool over the eyes of seniors and banks probably draw a huge proportion of their fees on unsuspecting seniors.

Your characterization of the situation is not accurate.

It doesn't matter if your Dad understood exactly what that $20 to $25 charge each month was for. He knew it was $20 to $25 and didn't mind.

It is significant your Mom is not willing to keep all the money in the chequing account instead and then select the chequing account instead on Interac debits. That would lower the fees down to $8 to $10 instead each month. Like earning an extra $12 to $15 of interest each month!

Your parents like that Scotiabank savings account, for some reason.

I had a similar talk with my parents years ago about their RBC chequing account. They understood what the service charges were for.

I mentioned the Royal Trust chequing account to them. Zero transaction fees for a minimum average monthly balance of $1,200. They did open one and did some of their transactions through that account.

But, they kept their RBC chequing account, even to this day!

The problem is actually in your mind and my mind. Your parents and my parents don't mind. You will just stir up needless friction between you and your Mom.

motusbank is trying hard to be a full service bank.
It offers chequing, interac, ATM access, bill payments, and mobile cheque deposit. I've never looked into bank drafts.
All of these services are FREE of charge, as are the accounts themselves, including the first 25 cheques.
Even their lowly chequing account pays more interest (0.15%) than a so-called high interest savings account at the Big Banks.
If the mom ever needs a service they don't offer, she can open an account at a bricks and mortar local credit union for that purpose. She might want a safety deposit box, for instance.

In fact, the accounts offered at the Big Banks now are already effectively negative interest accounts, but they have found a clever way of disguising it as fees since the uproar would be much louder if they admitted it.
With fees at about $16/month (+ tax?), and an interest rate of .05%, you'd have to deposit about 400K just to break even, never mind any profit with which to deal with inflation. For any deposit smaller than that, you are effectively getting a negative rate. Most people don't have that much to put into a savings or chequing account even if they wanted to. I can think of better things to do with 400K. We all can.
And we're not talking about hair splitting numbers either. You could have that same 400K deposited over four FIs for CDIC coverage (or 1 or 2 CUs) at an average rate of 1.25% and you would earn $5,000 over the year. It's a serious amount of money.

I'm glad motus is working for you. I did have some alarming experiences with them when they were fairly new, which I wrote about then. I don't use them for much right now, but I do keep it open and keep some money there that I might need to access quickly by cheque. It's too much nuisance to move it all from CIBC, where I pay no fees anyway due to being old. One of these days...

If a bank rep said to me, "banking isn't free", I think I would have said, "neither is my money". Or at least that's what I'd like to have said!

My experience suggests, and I am saying this with a straight face, that employees at these big banks are brainwashed by their training. I don't know what else to call it. I have sat across from some of them and had them tell me the most fantastical things, things that i knew were untrue, and they also ought to have known they were not true. But it was the strangest thing to watch the expressions on their faces and hear the tone of voice, because I think they actually had come to believe what they were saying. It was an unnerving experience, as if they were in a trance. As the customer, I began to wonder who I was really talking to.

So, I would imagine the person your father spoke to had come to believe the bank's sob story and was convinced the fees were justified. They seem to believe it's some kind of

"law of nature," the only way banking could possibly operate. It's like talking to any ''true believer"; you can't get anywhere because it's not a rational argument. Coming out confused would be normal. It probably cost more to pay this person to argue with your father than the fees they would collect from him. And I'm sure a great deal of time is spent in this fruitless pursuit. Not my idea of good management.
People your father's age do expect banking to be free, because it was free for most of their lives, at that very same bank. All these fees are a relatively recent innovation, but most of the people who work in the banks are too young to understand that.

As soon as covid lets up, my mom will be opening an account at Meridian. For her, I think bricks and mortar still matter, and they are a lot easier to deal with than RBC. She has been furious with RBC ever since they conned her into a TFSA she didn't want two years ago, resulting in a $240 fine she had to pay to CRA for an overcontribution. She was 98 at the time, hard of hearing and poor vision, and, most importantly, did not go into the bank to open a TFSA; they took advantage of her, plain and simple. They know no limits. While it might be nice if bank reps took it upon themselves to point out where you might do better with another account, there are also dangers in that because they may not be recommending the right thing, and one has to be careful. A favourite ploy where I live is to get seniors to give up their existing accounts for newer ones, with more "features" (that they don't need and will probably never use), then they find out later they lost some of their privileges as seniors, which they can never get back. Someone tried that one on me several years ago, but I was aware of the situation and didn't fall for it.

Anyway, there ARE alternatives. Happily, nobody has to put up with such bad treatment.

On a similar note. I have a grand-fathered chequing account at TD; meaning most fees are waived as long as the balance remains above $ 2,000 (it started at $ 1,000).
Recently I received an email stating the minimum balance is going up to a rather ridiculous $ 5,000 as of June 1st. I'm not happy about it but I am not going to run around looking for an alternative to pay bills etc. hence I will have $ 5k sitting there collecting virtually no interest which is a back-handed way to get fees from me. Pretty sleazy, IMO.

KamWest said
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@Norman1

The elderly rarely ever question bank charges, my mom said my dad asked but always got the runaround telling him banking was not free and charges are part of his services at the bank. I talked to my mother yesterday and he even had a meeting to discuss fees and came out more confused than ever. He was told keep 3k in the account and the fees would be removed. The account charge was removed but all the fees continued especially the unexplained ones in savings.

My dad just accepted the charges thinking there was nothing he could do.

It isn't just the elderly! Friends that were far from being elderly don't question as well.

One made an astonishing statement that PC Financial's chequing account is not a big deal. She gets "free" transactions with her RBC chequing account that had a $10/month fee! "Free" but $10/month?!?

I think it is more likely that your Dad accepted that there wasn't anything he could do because he, for some reason, wanted to continue with Scotiabank.

My parents were similar. They knew RBC charged a service fee for each withdrawal and each cheque, regardless of balance.

Unfortunately, as your Dad also found out, the bank staff are not good at explaining the fees. That's why I don't ask the staff to explain the fees. It would be similar to asking them to show me how the bank calculated the interest for a particular month because the number doesn't look right!

I just ask for the latest service fee schedule and figure it out myself at home.

I don't think you realize what banks like RBC and Scotiabank have accomplished. They found a large number of people who want to bank with them and will pay them fees for transactions. At the same time, their competitors have to do the transactions for nothing just to get a foot in the door.

Just like the big banks have found lots of people who will accept just 0.10% per annum for deposits while competitors like EQ Bank have to pay 1.25%!