Meridian New First Savings Account Promo 3% p.a. For 5 Months | Page 2 | Meridian Credit Union | Discussion forum

Interested to see how this turns out for both my wife and I have the Advantage accounts but never the GTG account....so I would like the offer. If I go to open an account it does show both these accounts as totally separate as entities. Though the Advantage account looks like it must be phasing out with the grandious offer of zero interest and such.

Loonie said
Meridian has a major communications problem.
Contact Centre staff may or may not yet be fully up to speed on this offer.
We are now being told there are 2 kinds of Advantage accounts, and that one disqualifies you and the other doesn't? This is ridiculous.
Nowhere on my statements does it say "HISA" or "Good to Grow".  

They should specify that in their GTG promo T&C. They're probably "covered" in that the T&C likely says something to the effect of "[...] reserves the right to retract or refuse the offer for any reason" and "offer may be suspended at any time for any reason," but it's sneaky and bad form. Meridian Credit Union should transparently disclose to which type of prior savings account disqualifies one from the offer.

Cheers,
Doug

I called my local service rep., as well as their help line and they both told me that there were two different Advantage accounts. One is GTG and the other is for regular savings. This makes no sense to me and rather confusing, I think they were just stumbling for answers. I don't think this is an acceptable way of running a business. Just how much trouble would it be to assign proper names to accounts?

Loonie, did you set up an automatic payment with Meridian so you would get the $300.00 after six months of payments?

Peter said
Looks like the current offer is 2.85% for 5 months: https://www.meridiancu.ca/Personal/Accounts/Savings-Accounts/High-Interest-Savings-Account.aspx

@GR: did you get an e-mail from Meridian about the promo rate increase starting on Monday?  

Did anyone receive email from Meridian?

I received the e-mail about the promo rate increase.

Here is a link to all their accounts and what each includes (note dual name for GTG account). I have both advantage accounts but only keep a small amount of money in the online (GTG) account. I haven't used the accounts much but it used to be that any in branch transactions had to be done through the advantage account so there was always a need to transfer money before you went to the branch. The attached chart implies this is no longer the case. Also the single free in-branch transaction per month for the advantage account was a pain.

Accounts and services

Well, I guess I'll have to max out a new account in my wifes name then, so I can claim the 3%. Max again is probably 500k

It sounds like, to me anyway, Meridian Credit Union is trying (poorly and in a very weasley way) to adjust their T&C, possibly retroactively, so as to make this promo apply to as few existing Meridian members as possible (that is, those without a GTG or Advantage HISA). They're clearly trying to target new members with this promo. 🙂

What you may want to do is close your GTG and Advantage accounts, leaving open a chequing account (if you have one) or just closing your membership and online banking profile entirely. That way, at some point when they offer a promo again and your old membership has since fallen off their system, you'll probably be eligible for any promos that they may have. This is another reason why I don't agree with Bill's apparent strategy of keeping a couple dozen low balance accounts with FIs open. Churn and purge your old banking relationships. It'll feel good!

My past banking relationships have included the following:
- HSBC Bank Canada (permanently severed last remaining ties in January 2014);
- ResMor Trust Company o/a as Ally Canada (permanently severed in early to late 2013); and,
- Interior Savings Credit Union (permanently severed in the early 1990s as a kid, involuntarily, when my mom transferred my children's savings account back to Scotiabank, an account which I still maintain but am contemplating finally closing)

Cheers,
Doug

Doug said
What you may want to do is close your GTG and Advantage accounts, leaving open a chequing account (if you have one) or just closing your membership and online banking profile entirely. That way, at some point when they offer a promo again and your old membership has since fallen off their system, you'll probably be eligible for any promos that they may have... Churn and purge your old banking relationships. It'll feel good!

  

Good ideas, Doug.
I will have to look into the chequing account thing if I can't get this offer, which I don't think I can. I'll have to see if my guy at Meridian thinks that would be possible as the necessary conduit to other investments. I don't envision keeping a lot of money in the Online Advantage account. ONly has a few dollars now or less. I have the feeling though that they are trying to eliminate anyone who ever had the account. I don't want to buy unnecessary cheques either.

I got a very good initial rate when I opened with them although can no longer remember what it was. I thin kit was six months. At that time, they hadn't figured out how to close the door behind me, so I went in another day and asked the guy if there were any restrictions on the offer (which was still being advertised, whatever it was) and he said no, so I did the same thing all over again. I think I got a year out of it. But after that they closed that loophole.

There is a contradiction between what the fine print in the email says and what the T&C says. One suggests you'd be OK if you hadn't had the specified account within six months; the other talks about opening your "first" such account. It also says the rate is subject to change (in the same way that Tangerine changes its base rate) and that "Offer may change or be withdrawn at any time without notice", just to keep you in suspense.

For me personally, closing it all down is not an option because I have GICs there including my most recent RIF which was supposed to go to Motus.

You sound like you've been reading Marie Kondo!

Loonie said

Good ideas, Doug.
I will have to look into the chequing account thing if I can't get this offer, which I don't think I can. I'll have to see if my guy at Meridian thinks that would be possible as the necessary conduit to other investments. I don't envision keeping a lot of money in the Online Advantage account. ONly has a few dollars now or less. I have the feeling though that they are trying to eliminate anyone who ever had the account. I don't want to buy unnecessary cheques either.

No problem. A point of clarification: you don't need to buy cheques when you open the chequing account. It's possible Meridian may provide you some free cheques (one book) for free since you're a senior, but even if not, you can just open a chequing account and tell your Meridian account manager (sorry, I thought it was the branch manager and that it was a woman) that you have no need for cheques; you just want to link your Meridian chequing account electronically to your other banks. You might ask for a branch-stamped VOID cheque or account verification form, which you could scan and use for FIs that have manual, paper-based account linking processes. This would also be sufficient for proof of account ownership purposes, should you wish to buy cheques later from ASAP Cheques or DiscountCheques.com.

There is a contradiction between what the fine print in the email says and what the T&C says. One suggests you'd be OK if you hadn't had the specified account within six months; the other talks about opening your "first" such account. It also says the rate is subject to change (in the same way that Tangerine changes its base rate) and that "Offer may change or be withdrawn at any time without notice", just to keep you in suspense.

What does the T&C say? That's usually more authoritative. If it doesn't mention the Advantage account, but the e-mail message does, you could argue to Meridian for a one-time exemption that you be allowed to get the promo rate because of that mismatch. That's how I got Coast Capital Savings to let me redeem my 33-month convertible GIC, at a lower rate, for the convertible 33-month GIC at 4.00%. They didn't want to at first, insisting the convertible GICs weren't convertible into other convertible GICs; however, the fine print of the GIC agreement and the promo terms didn't specify this. I remember @Rick being surprised I got them to redeem an otherwise non-redeemable GIC. 😉

For me personally, closing it all down is not an option because I have GICs there including my most recent RIF which was supposed to go to Motus.

You wouldn't be closing everything down. You'd be opening a chequing account to replace your savings account. You would then ask your Meridian account manager to update the GIC interest and/or principal payment account from your Meridian savings account to your Meridian chequing account number. Your annual or monthly RIF payments could also easily be updated with a few mouseclicks to your Meridian chequing account. I often found customers weren't aware how this was to do, so many would leave an old chequing account open for which they were using for only a single purpose (i.e., to pay their mortgage or loan) when they could've just updated it to a no-fee HSBC savings account or even to an external account. In fact, Meridian likely has the ability to set GIC interest/principal payment accounts to an external bank account; certainly they would for RIFs, such that you could have your Meridian RIF payments deposited regularly to a Motus Bank account or even to your Hubert or TDCT accounts. 😉

You sound like you've been reading Marie Kondo!  

Oh, really? I've heard of her, but this just seems like common sense to me. Too bad she beat me to the life de-cluttering book and method! 😉

Cheers,
Doug

Good said
For DOUG it is right in the term and conditions that you have to keep the account open for 12 months after you receive your bonus.Same conditions apply to National Bank Chequing account promotion also.

Thanks, I was replying to Loonie in post # 37 and to you in post # 36. In the case of the former, as I'm neither a Meridian nor Motus customer, I hadn't looked into it. Since there are plenty of forum members who have looked into the T&C, I simply provided advice in either case. Hope that clarifies. Nonetheless, appreciate you clarifying. In the case of the latter, I am aware of HSBC's promo T&C - have read it cover to cover, several times. I am just saying, have you ever received a demand letter? Their T&C says they may send you a demand letter to repay it. It doesn't say they will. If they did try and enforce it, I'm also saying that you could probably get out of that pretty quickly by citing a poor customer service experience and that you desired to end your relationship. If that didn't work, you could threaten to report their over-zealous collection efforts to the media and make negative publicity. Pretty easy to get out of such things. Nevertheless, I would avoid HSBC for other reasons; this being only a small reason.

Hope that clarifies,
Doug