My Experience with President's Choice Financial
I've been banking with PC Financial for about a year and a half now. Here's the report card.
Two things motivated me to open an account with PC. The first was the lack of banking fees. I had been paying $28 per month with my old bank - that's $336 per year. PC promised me no banking fees.
The other promise they made to me was that they would pay interest. And pay me they have. At the whopping rate of 3.00%, which was more than my old bank even thought of paying me. It doesn't sound like a lot, but sometimes I have $10,000, even $25,000, sitting in my bank account for the month. Not only did the PC account offer the prospect of interest of say $50 per month, I wasn't getting dinged $28 per month. The net gain to me was $78 per month.
So I went for it. How has PC performed?
Well, generally I'm happy with the service I've received. I'm capable of doing all my banking over the internet - which is what you have to do, since they have no branches. Their cash machines are tied into the CIBC machines (because they're a division of CIBC) so you can withdraw money with no fees from any PC machine or CIBC machine. Putting money in is the same - through a cash machine or by electronic funds transfer. No problem.
They have also of course faithfully paid the interest. And there are no banking fees, just as they promised.
There is one hitch. I'm not the best at ensuring I always have funds on hand in my chequing account to pay the outstanding cheques. I don't even write that many cheques - maybe one a month. But I have both a savings account and a chequing account with PC because the savings pays a higher interest rate. So I keep the money in the savings account and then transfer it over when I need to write a cheque or pay a bill, because you can only do that out of the chequing account and not the savings account. Except that I don't always remember to do that. And on two occasions, I've been dinged with a $35 service fee for writing an NSF cheque. Not because I don't have the money in one of my accounts - it's just that I don't have it in the right account. My other bank would have nicely moved the money across for me, but I guess you get what you pay for.
Overall, I'd give them a B+.
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