prairiechicken

Have just been googling looking for a bank account with lower charges, and came across Presidents Choice Financial and their no-fee bank account.

I am guessing that I will be doing away with the personal service I get from RBC, but I'm a bit disenamoured with paying $10.50 a month for the privilege of accessing my own money, only to find that cheques and e-transfers still incur a charge.

Does anyone bank with Presidents Choice, and if so how do you find it?

Edo

Yes PC is ok. I've heard that transferring money between your accounts can take up to 24 hours though.

I personally bank with a local credit union and the online bank Tangerine (formally ING Direct). Both are free. Tangerine has recently been bought out by Scotia so I can use their ATMs for free.

iaink

I've had accounts for years. Works great for me.
Transfers to savings are instant,the other way is 24h delay

BristolUK

Banked with PC for years. No problems at all. You have access to cash machines with CIBC as well as Loblaws/Superstore.

prairiechicken

Thanks. Since they don't have branches, how do you do things like bankers drafts or transfers of large amounts of money, like buying a car or something?

MarkG

I'm pretty sure that you can do that through CIBC, though they'll pile on fees.

prairiechicken

I get charged for bankers drafts with RBC though, on top of my $10.50 a month. So even if there's a fee for doing the odd one, it's unlikely to add up to as much as I pay per year for daily use of the account with RBC.

Also another question - is there a way to send money to other accounts using online banking that ISN'T interac e-transfer? Like BACS?

JonboyE

Checkout the local credit unions. You often get better service and lower fees. They are non-profit like the building societies used to be when we were young. Deposits are guaranteed by the provincial government.

You can pay utilities, credit cards, taxes etc through the pay bills function. To send money to other personal accounts interac is the only option. If this is important check that the credit union is signed up for interac transfer. Not all are.

Kaye5

How does PC and/or credit unions handle Sterling cheques?

We use Scotiabank and pay in Sterling cheques regularly over the counter - so we do use the tellers quite a bit. But we're also looking at fee free alternatives.

I also just got a Visa Debit from Scotia - I like that for online shopping.

Juggernaut1064

you should talk to RBC, i pay no charges but depends one what name your account is ?
I started with their basic accounts 9 years ago, Now i have no charges.

prairiechicken

How do you manage that?

I have a No Limit chequing account. I thought the only account they had with no charges was the day-to-day savings account, which doesn't actually let you do anything more than one debit a month...

How did you get a no charge account?

SchnookoLoly

I have accounts with both PC and Tangerine. I like them both.

Both are no-fee accounts. Tangerine has a referral bonus right now where if you sign up on referral then we both get $50 as a bonus, so I can send you one of those if you want! THeir savings account has higher interest rates than a lot of the other banks too.

PC is also really good and you can do a lot of stuff at CIBC. I haven't needed to get a bankers draft but how often do you need those? Car, house, that's about it? So even if CIBC charges you for it, you will pay less than you are with RBC's monthly fee anyway.

Some of the larger banks will waive fees if you have a minimum balance in the account, I know TD used to do that, if you had $3000 in the account then you had a bunch of fees waived, but there were still limits on the number of transactions and whatnot.

Send a PM if you want $50 for free.

Monique_in_Canada

if you are new into the country usually banks will waive charges....we opened a bank account with TD as soon as we landed here, and they waived charges for 3 months, which was enough time to get settled....as soon as they started wacking on the charges I changed to PC...this was 13 years ago, and still banking with PC....works great for me....I still have an account with TD...well a line of credit if I need it.....I don't owe anything on it, but if I need big chunks of money instantly its there......like buying a car, or paying for kids college fee's wot I do is use my credit card to pay for their years fee's then get a receipt hand that into Edward Jones so I can withdraw it from my kids school savings account, sometimes it takes a few weeks, so if my credit card needs paying, I use my line of credit to pay my credit card then pay the cheque in to TD to pay of my line of credit....

iaink

PC bank drafts ordered over phone, couriered to house or you can pick up at a CIBC branch. Fees no different to any other bank for the service.

Foreign cheques can be deposted in an ATM, (£200 would be entered as a $200 deposit) and will, eventually, get converted at the bank rate (eventually $4xx will show). They do however have VERY long hold periods on international cheques cashed in this way (2 months or more!), so better to arrange either a paypal or SWIFT wire transfer IMO, or do this as a transaction at your pay-to-play bank and then transfer the funds out as $Cdn to your PC account.


Dont confuse "no charges" with "no charges if you leave a minimum deposit amount dormant in your account" Interest rates here are not great, but just on principal I hate the bank holding my money hostage.

prairiechicken

OK, fantastic advice everyone, thank you. I think my plan is to open the PC account, and keep a free account at RBC that I can use if I need it. I talked to the guy in the PC Financial pavilion at my local superstore over the weekend, and was quite encouraged. Especially since I realised I'll also get money off gas in their gas station too. Bonus.

I will also check out Tangerine (thanks for the offer SchnookoLoly - will keep you posted).