petesdragon

I know bank accounts have been covered in the past on this forum, but i am asking for peoples opinions on Scotia bank , CIBC and Royal bank of Montreal as these are the 'local' banks where we are looking at living in canada , we already have a HSBC canadian account , but no branch in our intended location , so to repeat , how well do these banks treat customers and how do their accounts/mortgages compere to others out there? thanks for any information folks.

dbd33

They're all quite bad. Look at pcfinancial for day-to-day stuff and a mortgage broker for loans.

Madmac

Totally agree - The only good thing about Canadian banks is that they are all equally crap. So don't worry about which one you pick: you'll end up with a similar level of poor customer service.

Ing do a good savings account but not good if you want flexible withdrawals.

iaink

Another vote for PC Financial.

Butch Cassidy

What he ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^said (oh and a vote for Ing and My Scotia isnt as bad as the local TD).

stepnek

I'm not sure that they are all equally bad because as others have mentioned we've found PC Financial to be very good and useful. Our experience with the Bank of Montreal was less so which is why we then moved to PC Financial.

Madmac

Let me clarify - the big five: BMO, Scotia, TD, RBC and CIBC. All equally unhelpful; All about as customer friendly as a dose of worms; All reaping massive profits regardless.

PC Financial seem fine and so do Ing but I have most of my money in the Nationwide (UK) and that's where it will be staying.

yodiyokun

Why oh why is canada behind in the financial industry - the service is crap.

I have stopped comparing it to the UK or else will keep moaning.

Madmac

...because they can.


...and Canadians let them away with it but come the revolution and the anarchic republic (oxymoron - yeah, yeah grammar police ) I'll be up there, flaming torch in hand and urging on the windae breaking.

iaink

Cos people keep paying for it and the banks make tons of money from them. If I was a bank I wouldnt be changing either...there is no public pressure here that I can see to make a change happen.

If everyone signed in for free banking elsewhere, then the big banks would have to follow suit or provide a real service / benefit to justify the fees charged. But its not happened yet.

printer

As we haven't landed yet i cannot really say too much about the Canadian banking system but having read many many threads on here i am ready to be dissapointed.

That said we opened an account on a recent recce trip and found the branch very helpful and accomodating. They tried to give us an appointment later in the week and we said no can do we will be on our way home and hey presto they fitted us in that day. Had a long chat with our "personal banker" who was great and left an hour later holding our account details and swipe cards.

I will say that it was a refreshing change not to see glass screens up between the staff and customer which seems to be standard practice in all banks, building societies and post offices over here.

dbd33

Because Canadians are rather parochial. They don't know that things work differently out-of-state.

hot wasabi peas

I receive good service from my banks (TD and BMO) and I'm happy (well, not entirely) with the massive profits cos I bought stock in 4 of those 5 many years ago!

SkiBunny

Do most Canadian banks offer online banking as a normal part of the service?

I had assumed they would but the rest of this thread now has me wondering...

dbd33

TD and PC Financial do.