My mom has BoA. She seems to be happy. She rarely goes to the branch now, except when she uses her safety box. She does everything online and has very little complaints.
I use jp morgan chase. Maybe because I am in NYC, I have a lot of branches around me. I also do everything online. Both of my kids also have their accounts there and their accounts are still tied to mine (in order to enjoy my benefits).
Two words -TD Bank
My D has an account at Wells Fargo. They allow me to deposit a check into her checking account each month. I go in fill out deposit slip and go to counter. They no longer allow me to deposit cash. They do allow me to pay her credit card with cash. I don’t have an account at Wells Fargo. I know Wells Fargo has a bad reputation but our local branches are staffed with extremely nice and helpful college students.
My D finally had me sign up for Venmo. I now Venmo her each month.
The only reason I still have an account at BofA is that I don’t have to go to the bank. On my advice son #1 closed his account when they couldn’t offer him a free checking account. He moved to the local credit union. Son #2 in Boston has a BofA account and makes loan payments to me via electronic bank transfer. I use the phone app to deposit any checks that I may get (not too many these days), so I don’t have to go to the bank.
I have business, personal and D’s checking account at BofA. They are all tied together and there’s a lot of direct deposits and auto pays set up. I can easily transfer money around online. But I am very upset with them right now and my head is spinning trying to figure out how to unravel it all and figure out how to move it to another bank.
I have accounts at BofA and no problems – but I always keep enough of a balance so that I don’t get charged fees, and I do 99% of my banking online. And when I do go to the bank it’s generally just to use an ATM to withdraw cash, and those are generally accessible 24/7. One of the accounts is a joint checking account with my daughter – I set it up when she was a teenager and they wouldn’t allow her an account in her own name – as far as I am concerned it is 100% hers – but I do have the ability to transfer money in and out, and my shared access has come in handy sometimes when she is traveling abroad.
My son doesn’t have a BofA account and I’ve used Venmo to send money to him, no problem.
@thumper1 – have you tried Zelle? The whole point of that is to enable easy transfers of funds between banks. If your own bank doesn’t offer Zelle, then try Venmo – if this is to cover amounts
@Waiting2exhale – Venmo does have an option for instant access to funds – they just charge a fee for that. (25 cent minimum, 1% of the total, up to a $10 maximum) - so for example, if you sent your daughter $300 and she needed the cash right away, she’d pay a transaction fee of $3. You said that is something she only needed “at rare times” – so I think you should stick with Venmo. If it was a regular thing I’d say your daughter needs to plan better – but if it is only “rare” – it seems fair enough to me. I mean – the alternative of you driving to a bank to deposit money has its own cost – your time and inconvenience – so it really isn’t a “free” transfer mechanism either.
It’s pretty common for banks to put holds on deposited funds in any case – especially when drawn on other banks. So even if you can make a deposit to another person’s account, it doesn’t mean they can immediately withdraw it.
Not a fan of BoA and don’t have an account there, but when I want to get money to people I do it electronically.
You can do…
Bank to bank transfer
Venmo or Paypal or Popmoney
Online banking with check mailed to them so THEY can deposit it themselves
Just the title of this made my blood pressure rise. I had to deal with them for my sister’s estate’. First BoA set up the estate account wrong (in NY state) and that caused all sorts of difficulty (I am in Illinois) trying to organize things. Not friendly, rude and painful to deal with. I was so happy to close that account!
@ calmom- I didn’t know about the fee for cash access with Venmo. Will look into it for the next ’ Oh, Mom, I forgot…" call which may happen. Thanks.
Google “venmo instant transfers”
Though there really is something to be said for encouraging kids to develop enough discipline about money management that they don’t have these cash emergencies in the first place, absent truly unanticipated problems like a stolen wallet or a car being towed.
Be careful setting up Venmo. It is easy to give money to the wrong person due to similar names. That must be a reason that they have an FAQ on the matter.
Perhaps send a random number of cents ($0.01 to 0.99) the first time you send money to someone and then ask the other person what amount they got from you, so you know you have the correct person.
I was surprised when I went to my parents’ credit union that they have NO tellers anymore! Just machines. Blech.
I agree with using Zelle to transfer funds from your account to theirs. I signed up for it on my banks transfer page, took 2 minutes. The first time you use it it could take a few days for the funds to be available, but after the initial use funds are available immediately.
I have BOA Ctizens and a local credit union. boa online banking and new Erica online technology assistant is the best of the three. I use atm instead of tellers and I can deposit checks from my phone and it appears in my account next day. If you are a digitally inclined person it’s a great bank. But that’s why there are so many choices if you want something else. And fraud protection caught a scammer trying to use my account for an online purchase that seemed out of character for me and shut it down and declined transaction. Which was helpful.
@ ucbalumnus…the concern I had using Venmo the first time was probably eyeball- rollling laughable for the kid who was my test recipient.
The kid who did the reach out - using Venmo to communicate with me - was met with absolute silence until I established person- to-person contact through other means and grilled her on exactly the terms you have mentioned.
@calmom …I agree, money management is a discipline. But, of course, there must be money in the first place.
Things are better now.
My parents had an account with BOA. When dad passed I decided it was time to consolidate all the accounts into one manageable one. Went to BOA, with mom in tow. Closed the account and had a check issued. Done deal? Nope.
Two months later she gets a BOA statement showing the closed account is overdrawn by the amount of the original balance - and she owes two months worth of overdraft fees. Huh? I make a call, told all is well. Two months later - same thing. This went on for several more rounds. Finally, it turns out, there is a .05 balance in the account. This, due the fact that we closed it early in the morning but it didn’t clear until that evening - so it was the interest for that day. I told them - “keep the change” - no can do. I said I’d come to the branch to take the nickel - no can do, I’m not on the account. Finally, they said they could issue mom a check for the remaining balance - and asked if she needed overnight? Um, why, yes, she’s been waiting for that nickel for months…please send it via very expensive method. Oh, and the check had to be cashed or else the whole kerfuffle would start over again. I wound up going to the local branch and cashing it.
Rest assured, she spent her nickel wisely.
I closed our BofA account years ago. The company I work for had their business banking there and had an agreement that money would be available at 12:01 am on payday. I went to the branch and got some cash out. When the statement arrived, they listed the withdrawal ahead of the paycheck deposit that should have happened 12 hours earlier and charged me a low-balance fee. I went to the branch to complain, thinking they would make it right. They refused.
We had a much bigger issue with Wells Fargo. My wife got her small business loan through them. They promised her that there would be no penalty for paying it off early. When she inquired the payoff amount, they told her it would have a 15% early payoff penalty, then charged her a $1200 internal transfer fee (a different WF person is now in charge of her loan) and $3000 for the lawyers to look at the contract. It turns out it is all there in their fine print. They can charge you whatever they want.
All our personal banking is now through a CU.
This all makes me love my bank even more. Regional bank, not CU, but local. If I have an issue with a charge or check-balance issue or ANYTHING, the bank manager has the authority to fix it, remove charges - anything. And s/he always does.
When BOA was slow with the transfer in from my Fidelity account, a few checks bounced. They made it alright.
I think it is regional. At the two branches I use, I’ve had great service. My complaint is that they have personnel, so I can’t get in and out.