Should I close My Manulife Advantage Account? | Manulife Bank | Discussion forum

Top Dogg said
Hi,

My 5.75% (now 5.35%) interest promo with Manulife Bank runs out tomorrow on August 7th. I just called to transfer the funds in there to my Tangerine Chequing Account for the 5.75% promotional offer with Tangerine until September 30th. I was wondering if I should just close my Manulife Bank Advantage Account now in hopes that down the road Manulife will offer another promotional offer or should I just leave the Advantage Account open with a $0.00 balance?

Thanks,
TD  

I've had several Manulife Advantage account promos over the years and have left the first one open with a few cents remaining, closing the others as they expired. It doesn't matter one way or the other, offers typically go out to new and existing clients. If you close your account and open another later, it apparently reinstates any linked bank accounts you may have previously had.

Top Dogg said
Hey JohnnyCash,

Thanks for the reply. So if I understand you correctly, you closed some of your Advantage Accounts or the years and also just left some of them open as well? So at the end of the day you're saying it doesn't matter either way if I leave the account open or if I close the account? To your knowledge will doing either/or affect potential future promotional offers with Manulife?

Thanks again,
TD  

The primarily reason it makes no difference is Manulife requires new and existing clients to open new Advantage accounts to take advantage of new promos. So there's no disadvantage or benefit between being an existing account holder or not, other than any funds on balance in an existing Advantage account are not eligible for the promotional interest, in my case, at worst it's a few cents.

Lastly, if you were to keep your account and open another for a new promo, never initially deposit new funds into the old account and then try moving them to the new account. Make sure any new funds go directly into the account that was opened for the new promo, as those funds for some strange reason are not considered new funds if deposited into the old account first.

For many depositors, a rate good only to the end of September isn't worth the bother if there's a longer one around.

But...I've had issues with Manulife and I find they're less than transparent. If you have a dormant account, will they charge you a dormancy fee? To be safe, I'm going to close my account at the end of September or October when I verify no interest payouts are made.

I would think it'll be tricky to ensure any my funds are going to the new account if old closed accounts are suddenly reactivated.

Furthermore, I'm going to insist they inform Equifax and TransUnion my Manulife account is closed.