Which bank do you recommend

[JennyG]

Hey guys,

Seeing that the Rand is doing so well and that we will relocate to Canberra in the near future, I thought it would be a great idea opening a bank account from SA so long.

Which bank do you guys recommend?

Has anyone done this before?

[Bob]

Member's Equity Bank.

= cheaper banking,

lower interest rates charged on home loans (bonds)

lower interest rates charged on credit cards.

no fees and charges on day to day banking transactions.

http://www.membersequity.com.au/

M E Bank has got a couple of branches now newly opened in Canberra.

I see on their website, they are now opening a new branch up in Perth, Western Australia.

Over the past year or two, they've opened up about 6 branches in and around Melbourne, a couple in Canberra and a couple in Brisbane.

The network is spreading right across Australia.

Check M E Bank out and just compare it with the other main High Street banks.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the difference.

[Garrick]

We are with CBA, but they're nothing special and they are charging us $4 per account just to look after our money. I contract at NAB and they don't charge much it seems, but they're one of the big banks that are copping a lot of flak over their hidden fees, etc.

Think I'll take a look at ME bank today myself, after all you don't need thousands of your own ATMs when you can just "cashback" at the major food retailers.

-G

[HansaPlease]

I’m with ANZ. Can’t really complain.

$6 a month for account keeping fees with a few things thrown in. No fees for transactions, online banking is easy, credit cards are good (linked with Amex and Qantas Frequent Flyer which gives you frequent flyer points), online savings account is good, also have an ANZ online investment account and all of the above are linked and very manageable through online banking.

When I travel to SA, I just draw money straight from my ANZ account and use my ANZ credit cards – works out cheaper and less hassle than changing money/carrying cash.

Horses for courses.

[Jordy]

We with Westpac, and although the account is $5 a month, we dont pay anything because my salary is deposited into the account. Compared to RSA the bank fees are really cheap. No fees for withdrawals cheques deposits or anything. Service is fine, banks everywhere, lots of ATMS. No complants except the constant harassment to buy their life insurance. They phone offering life insurance and post stuff about at least every 3 months.

[21yearsoutofrsa]

I have had only good experiences with Westpac, both in NZ and Australia

www.westpac.com.au

[Aneldari]

I'm ANZ all the way although Commonwealth Bank is also a favourite of mine.

Cheers

[Bob]

These $4 and $6 a month "Account keeping" fees and charges are just the start!

Wait until you get to take a home loan out with them.

I think you'll find over the course of a 20 year home loan, "account keeping" fees each month will add up to $1 500 or $2 000. That's about R10 000 to R 15 000!

M E Bank is free of all these fees and charges.

My philosophy with banks is that they are getting to handle my money, making money in the business by lending it out to others at high interest rates.

Why should a normal bank customer be slugged "account keeping" fees each month and a "home loan account" fee each and every month of the loan's life?

You wouldn't expect a supermarket to charge you $5 "entrance" fee at the door when you go to shop at their store.

They make money on all the grocery items they charge you for, so would you pay an extra $5 "entrance" fee to shop with them?

I don't think so . . . . yet we have accepted the same rubbish from the High Street banks who never used to charge these exorbitant fees and charges years ago, back in the 1970s and 1980s.

. . . . . then again, those banks in those days, never made ever-increasing record profits every 6 months to give fat dividends to their shareholders.

M E Bank states that you are a shareholder, in a sense, by having joined one of the founding super funds that started M E Bank off in the 1990s for their members, purely because they were getting ripped off by the local High Street banks which were charging their customers exorbitant fees for service that used to be provided freely before.

The Industry Super Funds started Member's Equity because they wanted their members to get a fair deal in the banking market and so started a fee free banking service for them.

So . . . either pay for service or insist on no fees.

There really is a good alternative than paying fees for banking services that should be free.

[JennyG]

Guys, thanks for all the info! Definately a lot too consider! Much much appreciated!!!!

[Deon-Louise and kids]

We r with Commenwealth. Happy with them. Also have a saving account with them with a good rate of interest. They gave us a credit card despite us being on a 457 visa and r willing to consider home loan but we decided to wiat for PR

[Bob]

We r with Commenwealth. Happy with them. Also have a saving account with them with a good rate of interest. They gave us a credit card despite us being on a 457 visa and r willing to consider home loan but we decided to wiat for PR

. . . . . and paying unnecessary "account keeping" fees each monthly????

. . . . does the Commonwealth Bank offer a credit card to all its customers at only 10.9% interest??

. . . and is the Commonwealth Bank going to give you a long-term Home Loan that has monthly "account keeping" fees attached, when you read the fine print???

If so, I guess there really are people out there that would pay $5 "entrance" fees to shop at a supermarket if the supermarkets could get away with it!

Too bad.

[HansaPlease]

. . . . . and paying unnecessary "account keeping" fees each monthly????

. . . . does the Commonwealth Bank offer a credit card to all its customers at only 10.9% interest??

. . . and is the Commonwealth Bank going to give you a long-term Home Loan that has monthly "account keeping" fees attached, when you read the fine print???

If so, I guess there really are people out there that would pay $5 "entrance" fees to shop at a supermarket if the supermarkets could get away with it!

Too bad.

Bob, I agree with your sentiment about shopping around and not paying uneccesary fees, but you're implying that by paying the $6 a month that we're being sucked in and haven't done our research?

You don't have to have your mortgage with the same institution where you have your bank account - we don't.

ME bank doesn't offer me the same services as ANZ, so I don't see the issue. The frequent flyer points I've earned alone with ANZ are enough to offset the $6 a month bank fees.

I don't see the point in a 10.9% interest credit card when I never pay interest - I always pay my balance off before the end of the month.

Why would I bank with another insitution that doesn't offer me the services I'm after just to avoid $6 a month?

If ME works for you and it's free, that's great, but I reckon it depends on what works for you...

[Bob]

There has been a big hue & cry in Australia not so long ago to do with banks and their fees & charges.

They were charging like wounded bulls for anything and everything that the bloke in the street did with them.

Co-incidentally, they were also making enormous . . . . almost obscene . . . profits.

The average bloke coming to Australia needs to know how much the wallet in his back pocket is being touched by the banks every time.

Being an old fart, I can remember when the little old lady stuck her weekly $2 or $3 in the Commonwealth Bank, got her passbook stamped.

There was a little bit of interest @ 2.5% also.

The money was always there for her, when needed.

I stuck $10 in a passbook account with the Commonwealth (who I had my home loan with at the time).

I popped another $10 in the passbook about a month later and promptly forgot about it.

3 or 4 years later, in the early 2000s, I discovered the passbook, went to the Commonwealth Bank.

The whole $20 had "evaporated" in fees & charges over the months that the account had been "inactive"

It was robbery . . . . by another name.

Most folks nowadays also have a credit card. I have.

I pay 10.9% interest on any outstanding amount with ME Bank.

If I'd have got one from the Commonwealth, National Australian Bank, Westpac or ANZ, it would be far more interest.

When credit cards were around in the 1980s charging 18% interest, inflation was around 10% to 12% in Australia at the time, so the REAL rate of interest was 18 less the inflation figure of 12 = 6% REAL interest.

Now that Australia has inflation licked and it's only running at around 3%, why do the big banks still charge 18% on most cards?

The REAL rate of interest for the big banks is 18 less the inflation figure of 3 = 15% REAL interest . . . . much more real interest than back in the 1980s!

Can you see now how much the Big banks are really hitting the average bloke in the street? . . . and that's just on credit cards alone!

Why do Australians have to pay account keeping fees anyway??

I'm old enough to remember they never did years ago.

Why today?

Australian banks now have far less staff in the branch than ever before, yet their fees are the highest they've ever been!

Why is the level of service so poor nowadays, yet we pay more now than ever before?

If someone can explain that to me, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

[Strandloper]

Hey guys,

Seeing that the Rand is doing so well and that we will relocate to Canberra in the near future, I thought it would be a great idea opening a bank account from SA so long.

Which bank do you guys recommend?

Has anyone done this before?

Nothing wrong with any of the major banks, if you prefer one of them. There are only minor differences between them. All of them milk their customers to the best of their ability, but that seems to be standard practice with banks the world over since the 1980s. During the 1970s I had accounts with both Westpac and the CBA. There were no account keeping fees and I actually earned interest on my balance. That being said, I did not operate a cheque account and there were no ATMs back then. I was paid by cheque, and my personal budget was a strictly cash operation.

Credit Unions offer the best deals to their customers. If you want a credit card, debit card or ATM card find out which credit unions provide country wide/overseas access. They may not have all that many machines themselves, but you can probably use your card at any bank machine - for a fee which the banks charge, not the credit union necessarily.

Google is your best friend on line and in Australia. Everything worth knowing, and every major institution in the country, can be found on line.

This bank is customer friendly and operates in much the same way as a credit union.

http://www.bendigobank.com.au/public/

You can set your search engine to Australia. That speeds things up when looking for information about Australia.

http://www.google.com.au/

God speed!

[Strandloper]

Why is the level of service so poor nowadays, yet we pay more now than ever before?

If someone can explain that to me, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

Since the 1980s businesses everywhere are no longer content to break even, grow slowly and make a modest profit along the way. Its all about returns to shareholders, etc.

Directors' fees are what amaze me. As a university graduate and teacher of many years, I know a little about human beings, intelligence and ability.

No single individual can possibly be worth what they pay those people.

Why pay one person millions for being the titular head of an organisation where the real work is being done by hundreds, even thousands, of stressed, overworked people who are struggling to pay their house off? Its nonsensical.

When nations allow their leaders to do that sort of thing the result is all too frequently chaos and revolution. When businesses do it, its considered good practice.

If you want to know where your bank fees are going you need only look at shareholder dividends and directors' packages.

Somewhere in what's happening to the US economy is a lesson for all of us. You can only fool some of the people some of the time.

Perhaps someone somewhere here has got some answers:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/

Good source of news and opinion. Just wish I had more time, but someone has to do the chores around here!

[Bob]

Thanks for that outline of the different business cultures between the 1970s and 2000s.

I guess that America as a whole has a different business culture nowadays than it had a couple of decades ago . . . . with the subsequent consequences of the place going broke!

I don't have to agree with getting "milked" and like a lot of Australians, I kick up about it when I think that my hard earnt wages are being tapped by my bank to pay a top director his 13th million dollar for the year in "bonuses" and salary.

I don't see the fairness in that.

I always remember my old Economics teacher saying that if you pay for something, no matter what, you are "voting" for it be made again.

If people stopped doing business with banks that charged ridiculous fees and only banked with fee-free banks, like M E or Bendigo Bank, they would have to pull their heads in and stop ripping their customers off. The shareholders would insist on it, or the value of their bank shares would depreciate to nought.

[Strandloper]

If people stopped doing business with banks that charged ridiculous fees and only banked with fee-free banks, like M E or Bendigo Bank, they would have to pull their heads in and stop ripping their customers off. The shareholders would insist on it, or the value of their bank shares would depreciate to nought.

Exactly! That being said, we are still with CBA and Telstra (Not for broadband; and we don't bother with Pay TV).

We connected to the WWW in 1996. For the first few years I chopped and changed: a local ISP; Ozemail; another lot that went bust - can't remember their name but one of their founders was high profile and ended up in court - looked good for a while; Big Pond - Big Rip Off; Dodo, but only prepay for occasional use while away from home - heard they'd become unreliable; and our present provider.

Competition is such that we probably could do better for all our services, but the hassle involved in changing tends to put the brake on things.

For mobile use we stick to Vodafone because its the only one which keeps your prepay (PAYG) balance alive for 365-days even if you don't make a single call. It also gives us free calls to and from the kids; grown up and left home. Telstra is not competitive and Optus is too sneaky with their plans - complicated arrangements that give with one hand and take with the other. Not sure about the smaller providers. No way would I get a 'phone on a plan. You can pay for the phone five or more times over in two years; never mind the free calls.

One could go on and on. Its all about gouging money out of us wherever you look. A lot of it is for things we lived quite happily without in SA in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Before I visited the UK as a youngster I had seen a television set once, a Rhodesian set on display in a shop in PE. Of course there was nothing on it with no VCRs around, and too many mountains between Beit Bridge and Die Baai!. It was just there to attract the customers to buy the biggest Grundig radiogram or the smallest National transistor radio; state of the market at the time.

We used to have one radio in the living room at home and my grandfather had his own Supersonic bedside radio (Rhodesian made). My parents would not buy me a transistor radio; too expensive a gift for a school boy at that time.

A lot of things changed for the worse in Australia during the 1980s. It was such a relaxed, laid-back place during the 1970s; even Sydney. That being said, I never did like driving in parts of Sydney. Drivers were way too flash for a young man accustomed to dirt roads in the ECape. Semi-trailers have always been a menace in Australia; in the cities more than on the open road. Drink driving was also very common in the 1970s, just like South Africa. No one bothered until you actually ran into something or someone. There, but for the Grace of God I suspect, go many of us ...

Ever since 2008 we have been pondering whether Australia could go the same way as the United States. In the past we often have. We got cold feet and started shopping at Aldi, but soon drifted back to Woolies and Coles. Mind you, Aldi do import some good German foods around Christmas time. Saw this on Yahoo 7 just now:

Increase in financial risk for families

The period of excessive credit and leverage preceding the Global Financial Crisis, or GFC, saw working families take on more and more debt.

The period of excessive credit and leverage preceding the GFC saw working families take on more and more debt. While household indebtedness has eased since the GFC, it is still at levels above 150% and the likelihood of interest rate rises in the near future poses further risks for families. Growing fixed costs are adding to financial pressure.

As a proportion of the family’s budget, spending on non-food fixed costs has risen from 37% to 42%, driven by increases in housing, health, and education expenses — the traditional domain of governments. This rise in fixed costs means many families are now more sensitive to shocks from rises in price or the loss of wages.

High household debt makes the economy vulnerable. As the sub-prime experience in the US showed, a highly leverage economy cannot cope when the system comes under stress. The GFC was precipitated by extreme and irresponsible risks caused by seemingly inexorable rises in asset values and accessibility to credit.

ACTU President Ged Kearney said: “This major new report is a wake up call for Australia. As a nation we survived the global financial crisis better than most but that doesn’t mean it should be business as usual for the big corporations. Australians are among the hardest workers in the world. We work long hours and we are highly productive but wages are not keeping pace with company profits and families are exposed to high levels of debt and greater financial risk.â€

Source: ACTU

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/Increase-...006145.html?x=0

[Bob]

The telco you are trying to remember has slipped my mind, too.

I had a pre-pay deal with them. My mate got me onto it. 12c a min call costs, no flagfall. It was great. If you didn't use it, they didn't send a bill. How good was that?

The owners went to court to face the music about shonky deals. One of them was called "Adler" I think. Big time flyers!

Oz-Tel . . . . or something.

So . . . . you seem to remember Australia back in the 70s?? Don't get me started on those times, mate!

I remember sleeping on the beach in the sand one New Year's Eve night, woke up with just bathers on next morning, just lying in the sand . . . another year had gone by.

There was me and my motorbike it seemed I had total freedom to do anything, go anywhere, see anybody, work anywhere. I surfed all weekend and always had a place to stay at with my mates, if I wasn't renting a place with mates at the time.

I wish every kid could have had the freedom and life I had in the 70s.

[Bob]

We r with Commenwealth. Happy with them. Also have a saving account with them with a good rate of interest. They gave us a credit card despite us being on a 457 visa and r willing to consider home loan but we decided to wiat for PR

I do apologise for implying that anybody here is gullible for paying fees and charges.

The bank I recommend looking at hasn't been widely known until recently, and it was unfair of me to criticise anyone's choice of bank.

They may well have made the best judgement on which bank to use, given the information available to them at the time . . . which is what we all do.

I have apologised to the person concerned privately by way of PM.

My turn to sit at the back of the class!!!!

[craigsa]

Interesting thread, it's funny how us (ex) South Africans seem to be quite passionate about our choice of banks. I wasn't going to reply as I thought all the info may already be on here, but since I went into my CBA branch today, I thought I'd add my 2 cents. I'm with CBA and have had the following experience -

- No Bank Fees (If you pay $2000+) into your account on a monthly basis e.g. Salary.

- They agreed to increase my saving rate from 4.5% to 6% until the end of the year, then I can review again

- Never any queues in the branches I've been to

- Friendly and efficient service

- Easy to open account from South Africa (They contact you and also have a toll free number in SA)

I may choose to change banks next year, only because I want to ensure I get the maximum interest rate preferably without fixed term. I know Virgin Card has a deal for 6.75% at the moment, which is one of the highest I've seen, but I don't want to jump too soon (Enough admin for now) and will watch how things progress and decide early 2011.

[n/a]

We opened a NAB account online while still in SA. There are no monthly fees, but also no "savings" interest rate. I have no idea what hidden costs there are.

We haven't had any problems and they've been very accomodating, although I saw last night that they have the second longest call centre hold times...