Guanghu Cui was poring over his TD Bank statements in March, preparing to pay taxes for his small immigration consulting firm in Oakville, Ont., when he noticed a $1.50 fee for sending an e-transfer.
It was surprising, because when he’d opened his business account three years ago, his financial adviser told him the plan included five free transactions a month and he’d never exceeded that number.
Cui complained and eventually TD said it would reimburse him for the fees and compensate him for his “frustration and inconvenience.”
But when the paperwork arrived for Cui to sign, it included a condition saying he must “keep it confidential.” While he could speak about the dispute, he would not be allowed to tell anyone that TD had offered compensation.
Cui emailed TD to say he wouldn’t take the offer if the bank didn’t drop the gag order.
“I was told the offer is final and there’s no room for negotiation… take it or leave it,” said Cui. “That is just unfair. And that is unethical.”
“There’s no room for negotiation” is an odd thing to say to someone when you’ve indicated that you do not want certain information to be public.
“We dictate from a position of monolithic strength. Also, here’s a pickaxe.”
I wouldn’t sign it either. a buck 50. rather sing your sins from the mountains now that you pissed me off. of course if they just refunded it and kept quite I would be unlikely to mention it except maybe casually.
The story could be “I talked to TD and they fixed my issue. Great customer service!”
But they tried to buy him off for some reason…?
good point.
I had TD pit overdraft protection on my account without my consent (or coerced/implied consent) and I was livid. I went to the bank and demanded they take it off and they did immediately. They refunded the charges and gave me 2 months free of the service charge. Still mad about the asshole on the phone but the tellers are great at my bank.
I have a beef with all the trading firms because of the fee to leave thing that really needed congressional action. No business should be able to charge a fee when you cut ties.
Never ever TD, years ago I bought stocks of a company, through TD system, stocks were in Deposit/Withdrawal at Custodian (DWAC) and it took TD 1 month to find them and transfer them to my account, I needed to threaten them and went up to the ombusdman, I let dozens of messages, never ever they called me, only the dreaded email “we will ask for a transfer”. At one time I received an email with a phone number and “call me”, it was finally someone at TD who knew what it was and fixed the problem in 24h. Incredible. Never ever do trading with them.
I had the same experience with Citibank in 2001. I began saying “good morning, Michael. You’re the 22nd person I’ve spoken to in my attempts to get this resolved.”. They expressed incredulity, and that let me highlight the experience so far with names and comments. Nothing came of their sympathy, I’m sure.
Finally, after 29 people and me quoting chapter and verse of their obligations while they searched for money they misplaced - a sizable sum for me at the time - they did their bare responsibility and I had funds to use.
Sooo never doing business again with those guys.
TD has screwed me enough times to leave for another bank; Considering everything I had was with Canada Trust, that was no small feat… but a consistent and ongoing problem of:
- Told them I was traveling, please don’t lock the cards; cards locked for fraud protection on day 1 and we cant check into hotel. Spent the night in a bar that accepted the backup cash.
- Inheritance cheque was “Lost” and took 2 years to recover the money. Thank fuck for taking a photo of it on arrival.
- Account hacked- brokerage account. No way anyone could just randomly get into it or have conned us; we check it once a year at best. took almost the entire account in 499 increments until it was dry. Took a year took a year and police investigation to get that money back.
- Ongoing small fees and interest that should not be there trying to get snuck past on statements.
Finally left after almost loosing a hundred grand.
No one who values their money should ever do business with that bank. They cant even do the one thing a bank is there to do.
Yeah TD sucks. I was a cuatomer since the 90s when it merged with Canada Trust. I had mortgage, house ins, bike insurance, and RRSPs with them. it slowly got worse. The final straws were offering a prime plus .25% LOC and once I used it they did a randome re-eval and bumped up the variance rate, it went from about 4% to 7% and a then 12%. They did not want to discuss the practise. But shortly after I knew I had a payment coming from my account so put cash in in the morning. Checked it all at night and all went through fine. next day I have a NSF charge. They switched the deposit order so it went in after the night withdrawal. I went to TD that day and started cancelling everthing with them. So for them trying to make a quick shady $45 bucks they lost all my business…they don’t even care they lose customers, they just keep screwing the ones that stay
Do y’all have credit unions up there?
We do. People just get stuck thinking the bank is the only way. We switched to CU years ago after multiple screwings by TD
My brother and Mother have been with the same credit union for a combined 35 years. I was denied an account there because I had a $45 phone bill that was sent to collections 8 years ago.
I would say like 70% of people don’t qualify for an account with a credit union.
The 70% is totally untrue. my wife got a Credit Union account with 0 hassle despite having a phone plan that went to collections because she refused to accept new terms while already in a contract. Credit union did not care, because it does not affect them with you using account as savings/ chequing. Now when she asked for a loan, they told her she should reconcile the credit claim fIrst.
Down here most credit unions were run by employers. So the only check required is usually “who is your employer” or “what is the address of your employer” or “what is your home address”?
If any one of the 3 meets their criteria, you’re eligible
Did the phone bill disqualify you from an account without credit? Usually the application for credit involves debt checks, not for a checking account at a Credit Union.
Same in Canada for our Credit Union, they only ask you reconcile past debt if you want a loan through them, but regukar accounts are no issue
I guess each credit union is different but from my experience they only want people with exceptional credit history to be members.
Here in America atleast they run credit checks. I don’t think Canada has a credit score system so it probably works a lot different.
my wife had activly bad credit, bad enough she couldn’t co-sign for the mortgage. joined the credit union no problems. Never heard of a credit union caring about your debts as long as you are not taking a debt through them (ie a morgatge or loan)
We have credit score system in Canada, but it does not affect you opening a credit union account.
I guess each credit union is different but from my experience they only want people with exceptional credit history to be members.
I had middling credit score and a bunch of credit card debt. I showed the credit union I was making the interest payments on my credit card, they offered me a line of credit large enough to pay off the credit card and an interest rate that would keep my payments the same but actually pay down the principle. They then paid off my credit card and acted as my agent to close all of my accounts at TD.
It doesn’t sound like you have credit unions down there. It sounds like you have private clubs for money. Which checks out. In Canada, banks credit unions are tightly government regulated, and opening a personal bank account is a legal right.
Tittie Bank?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Guanghu Cui was poring over his TD Bank statements in March, preparing to pay taxes for his small immigration consulting firm in Oakville, Ont., when he noticed a $1.50 fee for sending an e-transfer.
It was surprising, because when he’d opened his business account three years ago, his financial adviser told him the plan included five free transactions a month and he’d never exceeded that number.
The contracts, typically signed by two parties, were initially created to protect trade secrets or intellectual property but have evolved into a common tool to silence people who have been wronged: financially, professionally or, in the case of sexual assault victims, physically and mentally.
Can’t Buy My Silence, a group that campaigns for legal changes related to misuse of nondisclosure agreements, estimates that 95 per cent of civil suit settlements in Canada now include one.
After Go Public contacted BMO about the case, a spokesperson called Mireau to let him know the bank had reconsidered, and had deposited the other half of his stolen money into his account.
Last year, the Canadian Bar Association swiftly passed a resolution, committing to discourage the use of these agreements to silence victims of abuse, harassment and discrimination in the workplace, schools and other organizations.
The original article contains 1,103 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Very poor summary. Bank and complainant both change between start and end.
Ultimately, this summary is 100% useless.
This bot often is. It seems to only randomly cut out sentences and paragraphs. You’d think that with today’s LLMs it would be possible to create something much better.
Of course it’s possible. The question is whether someone is willing to pay for it out of their own pockets. Compute isn’t particularly cheap.
