Australia's biggest bank has paused its plans to charge customers a $3 fee to withdraw their own money at bank branches around the country, a day after it was announced.
I had a dollarmites account in primary school, I had 20c in it for like 15 years. at some point they switched it to a club Australia account without informing me and tried to charge me a years worth of monthly account keeping fees. I told them to pound sand and close the fucking account and would never do business with them again.
Why anyone is still with a bank is beyond me. Join a credit union.
I don't understand it either honestly. But according to a quick google, it mostly boils down to this: banks are run for profit (to shareholders, who then pass along some of that as interest), whereas credit unions are non profits that return all their "profit" to members (which I guess technically no longer makes it profit, but I'm not sure what else to call it)
If your country is Australia, we do indeed have credit unions, People's Choice Credit Union is the one that comes to mind, but I know there are others. I think they're probably like a super minority - I've never met somebody in real life that has banked with a credit union. But some of them are kind of like industry super funds in that you need to be employed in a specific industry to be eligible for an account with them (see: Teachers Mutual Credit Union)
With a bank, they operate to maximise profit for their shareholders (not members / customers).
With a credit union, you buy a share when you open an account which means every member/ customer is also a shareholder. As they run to maximise profit for their own customers, that means decisions and pricing is made that benifits the customer.
The result is cheaper (or no) fees, better interest rates on loans, higher interest rates on savings accounts, and usually way more flexible on things like paying back extra on home loans.
In Australia, Credit Unions (and building societies) are covered by the same government guarantees that Banks are so the old fears of your money not being safe are stupid.
cough when they just kinda forgot people have money, and duplicated every transaction putting most people in horrendous debt for a day
They didn't even really apologise for that. They did on their website, but besides that, I didn't hear shit from them. Not even an apology letter, let alone any form of compensation
@Baku About time they backed off. Our banks most profitable in the world. We the users are doing it tough, and they still reporting record profits. It's why I use a community based bank!
I've used CUA (now Great Southern Bank) for 19 years, and I never want to change. Never had an issue with them, great customer service on the phone and in-person.
I read these stories about these major banks, and I'm thankful I've never migrated banks lol. This is just insane.
Good use of the interrobang (such a dirty sounding word), chudsy
Once I turn 18, I'm closing my CommBank account and going to ING. They seem to have the best feature set and terms for my needs. Macquarie and great Southern also came up though
We switched to Beyond Bank and love it. App works great, they have no issues with opening multiple transaction or savings accounts on one account so I can have a spare debit card for the kids and two savings accounts.
I have yet to see a fee, though I imagine there are some in certain cases.