Friday, November 30, 2007

Hidden Fees at Chase

Recently, I have been moving my assets around to different banks, seperating out what I consider temporary versus permanent cash.

My Chase account is the primary receiver of money, and from there, I distribute the money to my investment accounts, credit cards, etc. While this has been successful, I had wanted a better method to transfer funds between accounts in different banks rather than writing checks and walking into brick and mortar facilities to cash them.

I saw that Chase offered online transfers, and thinking they were the same as the e-bill pays I had been performing, I linked my Citi account to my Chase account. I then went through the procedures and transferred $1,500 in my Citi account.

After two days, I noticed a $3 fee related to the transfer. When I called Chase, they promptly told me that:

  1. There was a fee to transfer money online
  2. I agreed to the fee in some jumble of legal disclaimers (who ACTUALLY reads them?)
  3. The price is stated in small font somewhere on the website

Of course, per the norm, banks can nickel and dime you out of anything, so after about 30 minutes, I gave up on getting my $3 back.

But it angers me that the fee is equivalent to a 0.2% charge on moving my OWN money around.

Watch out for these so-called "conveniences" in your online banking activities.

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