Do you feel lucky? Well, do you punk?
After yesterday’s parting comment about “See if you can find a lower rate somewhere else, we dare you!” caused a good reaction, I figured I’d keep going with a snarky remark theme (with proper reverence to Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry).
Most banks these days are banking (pun intended) on you not willing to change banks. They treat you like cattle (don’t the waiting lines at the bank branches that are still open not remind you of lines in a slaughterhouse?). I have talked about this topic ad nauseam, but in case new readers are unaware, your bank does not own you, nor do they own your money. You should not feel obligated to stay with a bank, primarily if they mistreat you, or give you bad service. This is true of all service-providing firms (Telephone companies, Restaurants, Grocery stores, etc.), but acutely more so with banks.
I have changed banks three times so far and have accounts at a few others just in case I feel like changing again, and I have made this approach abundantly clear to my current bank every time I talk with them about a new service or how they screwed up something else in my financial life.
As I wrote yesterday, TD has decided that they can mess with me by changing the interest rate on my Line of Credit from being “Prime” plus 0.5% to “Prime” plus 1.0% where they effectively have said, “See if you can find a lower rate somewhere else, we dare you!”. I am sure that if I walked into the BMO branch closer to my house (or the RBC branch even closer), I might get something close, if not better (at least in the short-term), but am I willing to roll the dice and change?
Given the dawn of new websites that allegedly compare different insurance offerings or cell phone plans, this might be a money-making idea for someone to set up. Have a user input some simple “service needs” statement from a set of menus and then have all the different banks reply with their best offers (it might even be fun to make sure the bank they are currently using knows this customer is looking around). How hard could this be? What would even be more interesting is if someone like PC Financial or ING did this kind of service so that you could see how much you might save using their services.
I will gladly kibitz for anybody who wants to try this (I am not a consultant, only a Kibitzer).
Remember, you read this idea here first!
I have to be honest. The thought of changing banks for me is rather daunting. I have been with the same bank for over 15 years. I have nearly all of my bills electronically debited from my account. The thought of having to change all those payments is overwhelming. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here though.
Last time I went to the bank to the bank for a line of credit, I was told that I couldn’t get a better deal elsewhere and that I would waste my time looking around.
I then literally crossed the street to another bank, got offered a better rate, called back the first bank and waved to the first individual while talking to him on the phone.
He’s been very nice and accommodating ever since.
You need to be ready to act on your threat of changing bank.
Yes, you cannot play it as a Bluff, you must be ready to follow through.