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Bank Recommendations

thanks LC, I'll have a look

I do actually have USD on hand in a savings account
load it up when the rate if favourable
transfer some to the prepaid card when I'm set to go, zero exchange or fees
I like the low risk of fraud or whatever with it
if the bank kills it for whatever reason, or a scammer gets the small amount on it
my other CC's still work

of course the transaction has to be done in USD or you eat a fee and exchange hosing
 
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Baggsy said:
...I've had a non RBC card refused, because I gassed up twice within a short period of time at different stations.....
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Had that happen before too. Fill up multiple times when on a day ride. After the first time called the CC company and got that removed.


Best to have multiple CCs, Visa, MC, etc....but not too many as that hits your credit rating. Each limit adds up to what you could potentially be in debt for.
 
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Lightcycle said:
That's assuming you have USD on hand. Otherwise, you're just pushing the forex fee from Visa (which charges 2.5%) to the bank or forex service, which will still take 1-1.5% to exchange your CAD to load up your USD prepaid card, depending on the amount transferred.

Better to use a 0% forex fee card. I had the Amazon Chase card which had a 0% forex fee for any currency back to Canadian $. Unfortunately, they discontinued that card last year, but there are two others that popped up to replace it:

Home Trust Preferred Visa: no forex fee, no annual fee, 1% cashback
Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite: no forex fee, $139 annual fee, 2x Scotiapoints on groceries, entertainment, dining and transit (which you can convert back to cashback at 10:1 Scotiapoints:CAD)

I actually have both, and although the Scotiabank card has an annual fee (I got the first year waived), I calculated that you make that back after $700 of groceries/dining/entertainment/etc. And then the cashback accrues much faster than the 1% of the Home Trust, which has no annual fee.

Plus you get 6 PriorityPass airport lounge passes each year, which if you're doing a lot of air travel is invaluable for long layovers.

Sounds like you do a lot of travel, you should check out the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite.
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Thanks Lightcycle. I had the amazon visa for low value forex and was annoyed when they killed it. I'll look into the hometrust card.
 
JavaFan said:
I do actually have USD on hand in a savings account
load it up when the rate if favourable
transfer some to the prepaid card when I'm set to go, zero exchange or fees
I like the low risk of fraud or whatever with it
if the bank kills it for whatever reason, or a scammer gets the small amount on it
my other CC's still work

of course the transaction has to be done in USD or you eat a fee and exchange hosing
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So a couple of things:

- I've had my card # stolen dozens of times over the years. If you're on the road, logistically, it's a bit of a nightmare since you'll need the card couriered to where you are. But financially, the CC has reimbursed me 100% on any fraud. I've never eaten the cost of a fraudulent transaction on a stolen credit card, ever. But that's why the CCs charge 21% interest/year on month-to-month balances...

But you face the same problem with a USD Prepaid Visa, that card is still off-line till you get a new one mailed to you. Better to carry a back-up card (or 5 in my case).

- The forex fee saved (or moved) with the USD Prepaid Visa only works if you travel in the US. If you use the USD card in any other foreign country and the merchant asks, "Do you want to be charged in South African Rand or US dollars?" and you answer USD, you will be charged something called a Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) fee at the POS terminal, which is about 1.5-3% more than if you just had them charge it in their local currency on your Canadian dollar credit card.

So in this scenario, you're paying the 1.5% USD-to-CAD rate at the teller to load your USD Prepaid Visa, and you're paying 3% at the foreign POS terminal to go from their local currency to USD. That's potentially a 4.5% forex.

If you had just used your Canadian credit card you would only have paid the standard 2.5% Visa forex.

More on the DCC here: https://solotravelerworld.com/home-or-local-currency/
 
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Riceburner said:
Best to have multiple CCs, Visa, MC, etc....but not too many as that hits your credit rating. Each limit adds up to what you could potentially be in debt for.
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Not quite true.

Your credit rating (FICO score or VantageScore) is based on your history of paying back debt on time. The total amount you can borrow has 0 impact on the credit rating. Now banks may look at that total amount of potential debt and *possibly* deny you a mortgage, line of credit or credit card if your income won't support it, but that has nothing to do with the actual numerical credit rating score.

It is true that your credit rating is negatively affected at the time you *apply* for new credit, but that quickly recovers to the level it was at after a few months of regular payments.
 
^ yup

other than the obvious impact of missed payments
a series inquiries in a short time span can trigger problems
especially if they did not result in a new credit product = denial
 
Riceburner said:
Had that happen before too. Fill up multiple times when on a day ride. After the first time called the CC company and got that removed.


Best to have multiple CCs, Visa, MC, etc....but not too many as that hits your credit rating. Each limit adds up to what you could potentially be in debt for.
Click to expand...

I thought you could actually drive your score up with multiple cards? They like to see you using a low percentage of your available credit. Increasing credit limits can drive your score up as your percentage has dropped. As Lightcycle said, there is a small chance someone may not like your possible debt limit, but I haven't heard of that happening to anyone I know.
 
GreyGhost said:
I thought you could actually drive your score up with multiple cards? They like to see you using a low percentage of your available credit. Increasing credit limits can drive your score up as your percentage has dropped. As Lightcycle said, there is a small chance someone may not like your possible debt limit, but I haven't heard of that happening to anyone I know.
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There are a number of factors but, multiple open revolving credit card open at once is frown upon.

Even if you carry multiple credit cards with large limits for a long time. It’s viewed as a financial liability. Even when your credit score is very good.


Typically the best profiles are those with one or two cards, moderate limits, no balances and opened for a long period of time.

About 20 years ago, every bank and card issuer was competing to be number one in your wallet.

Lots of folks had dozens of cards with limits and others would jump at the chance to offer their card to you.

Not so much any more.

One loc. One primary cc and another secondary card as a back up to your primary is the way to go.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I should have said potential liability instead of credit rating then. Either way, I keep only a couple of cards.
 
nakkers said:
There are a number of factors but, multiple open revolving credit card open at once is frown upon.
[..]
Typically the best profiles are those with one or two cards, moderate limits, no balances and opened for a long period of time.
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Kind of a blanket statement.

Banks don't make money by *not* lending out money.

I'm sure the best profiles are actually the ones that have the income to pay back what they borrow... but not enough that they aren't accruing a healthy amount of interest along the way.
 
sburns said:
Your Apple pay is tied to a credit card is it not?
Your Pay Pal is feed through a bank account or credit card is it not?
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For Apple pay and Pay Pal I did tie tie them both into AMEX. A fine line maybe but no bank affiliation.

However one of our investors is an accelerator called Plug and Play who actually bootstrapped PayPal, so been involved in trials with another or their startups that provides a gateway to link Apple Pay, Google and Pay Pal to Crypto Currencies. Have been using that quite successfully for a few months even though its still beta trials with very limited access. Now, if i can just have payroll buy Bitcoin directly :)
 
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I just went through this myself. Was a Royal Bank customer since I started work but reciently switched to TD.

I was n the RCAF for 20 years. While I did do some traveling during my service the RCAF took good care of you so you had no real dependence on a bank. I left over a year ago an took a job as a military contractor with Boeing. That’s a whole new world.

That’s when the problems started. the Royal would constantly freeze my cards and accounts because of security risks and threats. I has to sleep in my rental car Twice as I couldn’t check into the hotel.

Ive been with TD since last September and have not had an issue. They made it really easy to switch as well. It’s the little things I like. The chip went on my TD bank card, so I was able to walk into a TD branch in San Diego and get real card with tap and chip immediately.

When my Royal one got zapped it took 10 days to have the royal replace it. I had some temporary card that only let me take cash out of a Royal bank branch.

I would say, do your homework and definitely move if you are not satisfied. I’m really happy now. I have no loyalty to a bank as they are all a bunch of blood suckers anyway. They treat your money like it’s their own. It also will not impact your credit history or rating when changing. That’s all based on your debt payments and managed by companies like Equifax.
 
I also think a lot of the problems is that banks try to do things on the cheap. It’s systemic in their culture to squeeze every cent so as David McKays stock will go up a quarter point.

We have a partner in the cyber security space called Radware. They are really well known for things like WAF and DDoS mitigation but they also do a lot of banking stuff. TD is one of their customers but they are the only Canadian bank. Radware are bloody expensive but it works. I’m in Media and Entertainment and before those companies started taking things seriously you had incidents like Avatar being released on pirate DVD before it was in the theatres

Sounds like a case of being penny wise and pound foolish for the Royal Bank. While it’s simply just an inconvenience for you today, just wait until one of them gets hit for billions. The we’ll all have to bail them out... again.
 
Thanks to all. TD it is.

It's all complete and the process was quite painless. I had to move 9 accounts so the paperwork did take a little time. It also took me about an hour to change all the direct deposits and withdrawals but its done now. The only thing left are the transfers on the trading accounts as they are coming over in kind so it could take up to 12 days

The nice thing was that TD picked up all the transfer fees and with all the special offers they had on their different products I ended up making about $800 + got 200 free trades :) I went from paying $25 a month for chequing to $0 with unlimited ATM withdrawals, free interact and wire transfers and my wife's small business account dropped from $55 a month to $6.90 for exactly the same services, and I have $10,000 overdraft protection for free (obviously there is interest if I use it)

The RBC manager was furious... Payback is a ***** ;-) Tried to make the argument that its not possible to give me bank drafts to close out accounts as they need a formal notice period and approval from head office. My response was "Riiiggghhht", in my best Dr. Evil accent.

I completely agree with the cheap comment above. I hired a Software Engineer from TD about 6 months ago. He said that Royal Bank IT/Engineering is almost completely staffed by TATA with people from India. The first few people they send are brilliant, really bright guys/ladies. Once the Royal Bank got confident with TATA everyone else they sent after that were just picked up somewhere off the street. Projects take much longer, cost a lot more and TATA bills them for all the overages. Caveat Emptor

I'm not knocking TATA. They are one of our competitors and are quite shrewd, and I now have a weird kind of new found respect for them. If they can get away with it why not :)
 
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Clem said:
Tried to make the argument that its not possible to give me bank drafts to close out accounts as they need a formal notice period and approval from head office.
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So let me get this straight.

It's your money, but they won't give it to you unless your give them a notice period and they also have someone in the head office approve you withdrawing your own money!!!

Who runs that bank, Eugene Crabs :)
 
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I'd check with an RBC SE rather than one from TD. There was a big move of some people from RBC to TD around 10-15 years ago. If you're with TD, or with any bank really, check your statements like a hawk. A family member had their mortgage payment bounce, because someone was out the amount of their cheque, so it was simply reversed to get them balanced. It took days just to get the cheque cleared up.
Mike-the-Bike said:
So let me get this straight. It's your money, but they won't give it to you unless your give them a notice period and they also have someone in the head office approve you withdrawing your own money!!! Who runs that bank, Eugene Crabs :)
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Never dealt with HSBC, have you?
 
Mike-the-Bike said:
So let me get this straight.

It's your money, but they won't give it to you unless your give them a notice period and they also have someone in the head office approve you withdrawing your own money!!!

Who runs that bank, Eugene Crabs :)
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They did this to me when I was leaving. By law they have so many days grace period to give them a chance to talk you out of it.

The OP must have been a reasonable customer over the years. I would imagine if you were a dead beat that they were always chasing for debt they would probably hold the door open for you, and have a party in the back room once you left ;)

When I changed the manager took me into her office and gave me this big sob story of how bad this was going to reflect on her.
 
Mike-the-Bike said:
So let me get this straight.

It's your money, but they won't give it to you unless your give them a notice period and they also have someone in the head office approve you withdrawing your own money!!!

Who runs that bank, Eugene Crabs :)
Click to expand...

I was closing out a CIBC registered account and they wanted $100 IIRC to close the account. I asked what happened if I defunded the account but left it open. That costs $0. I still have that account open with no balance. Idiots.
 
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