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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

Banks and credit cards cancel inactive accounts.

My experience with this was having a dormant Chase account with like $100 in it, which they chipped away at, withdrawing the $4/mo fee or whatever, until the balance was at $0, whereupon it was immediately closed.

I'm not sure if this really counts for much in their favour.

Wells Fargo "accidentally" failed to close my account when I went in person to close it--though they did give me a check for the balance and told me it was closed--and then when I realized six months later it wasn't actually closed, they tried to make me pay them 6 months worth of monthly fees before they would close it.

When I closed my Wells Fargo account, they took out all my money, charged me some account closing fee, which over-drafted and fell back to a credit card which now had a balance on it due to the overdraft and they told me they couldn't close my account. I think I ended up paying something like 130 dollars of fees just to close my account, but at that point they'd already screwed me over so many times that I just paid it all and walked out.

Terrible, terrible company.

Every person everywhere really needs to move all their money to credit unions, our banking system is so thoroughly fucked.

I closed a bank account in the UK in about 2001. I emptied it at an atm then walked into the bank to close it.

The cashier gave me all the cash I’d already taken from the account.

I really hope this is true, always nice to hear about the robbing happening in the opposite direction.

I gave the money back when I realised what had happened, which was about 5 minutes later.

Do you mean you got your balance twice?

Yes. I gave it back.

In the US, they would reopen your account without telling you and start charging you fees and/or interest on the amount they overpaid. I know this because it happened to me last year when American Express mistakenly refunded a credit to me twice when closing an account (one check and one bank transfer). I never even cashed the check but apparently that didn’t make a difference to them.

This is why I loved Simple Bank so much. No such fees; too bad they are shutting down.

Perhaps that's why they are shutting down?

No, they’re shutting down because their parent bank got bought by a bigger bank who likely wants the tech/team for something else.

I've no experience with the bank named and assume it is in the US, but for what it is worth, in the UK people hardly ever pay for bank accounts. It does appear to be viable, although I'm not sure how it works.

Revenue from account fees must be peanuts, they make their money lending/investing/etc. deposits, in normal times interest rates are positive, so they might even pay for custom, getting more deposits, giving them more capital to make their money from.

Charging for bank accounts in North America is just like commission on retail brokers - everyone else is doing it, so why not? Eventually probably 'fintech startup challenger banks' with the novel idea of not charging will gain too much market share, and the big boys will scrap the fees too in order to compete (and barely feel it).

The big US banks each make over $1.5B in overdraft fees yearly. Fees on consumer accounts make up about 3-4% of the big banks annual income. Not as much as they make on consumer interest payments, but those are still some pretty big peanuts. I think they'd feel it if they scrapped fees.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/22/investing/atm-overdraft-fee...

https://www.depositaccounts.com/blog/banks-income-fees.html

It's subsidised by eye watering fees on unarranged overdrafts. When the FCA and CMA looked into it several years ago, the banks claimed they couldn't reduce overdraft fees or they wouldn't be able to afford to offer free bank accounts any more. Some challenger banks wanted it to be forbidden to describe such accounts as 'free'.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/20...

Fascinating link, thank you!

Ha, I had a bank account that I opened for one specific purpose then forgot to close. It was empty. They kept withdrawing account keeping fees, sending it into overdraft. Then they added overdraft fees. When I went to close it, they tried to badger me into paying all the fees first.

I closed an account with Santander and they sent the remaining monies in it to another bank account.

Then they accepted a charge on the account from a subscription I had forgotten to move, even though the account was closed, and because my account was then in deficit decided to reactivate my account without letting me know. Then they charged me an overdraft fee and daily penalties, and then eventually sent me a bill with like £120 of charges.

I challenged it and had to speak on the phone to people for ages. Eventually they took the charges off as a "one-off gesture of good faith" which annoyed me, because it still implies that it was my mistake and not theirs.

Did you close the account manually or via the Switch Guarantee service? https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk

If signed up to the scheme (most are, including Santander), your old bank is responsible for passing on any deposits directly to your new bank account and the new bank is responsible for processing any transactions made using your old details. This carries on for, I believe 12 months.

I found the Switch Guarantee service to be excellent and believe it's a significant driver of innovation and competition in UK banking (which is far ahead of many other European countries in my experience).

My payees from my old bank were even transferred over to my new one.

(Current account = checking account to any non-UK readers.)

Ah, that's good to know for the future - I closed it manually. I wasn't told about this and didn't know about it - mind you it was a few years ago so not sure if this is a newer service.

Since 2013 although I don't know if Santander was in it from the start. I'd guess yes.

I’ve had an empty Ally bank account open for at least a decade. Still get statements for it each month. Every time I’ve tried to close it, it’s accumulated $0.01 interest, which I have to transfer out before closing. That transfer takes a few days, so by the time I can close it, I’ve totally forgotten about it, or don’t have the will to go log in.

Leave it. If you're in CA (or some other states, but I know for CA) it'll get shut down after 5 years or so and the funds will go through escheatment to the state. Then you can go get them from the state. But you have to remember not to login and ignore all notices from them.

That’s part of of most states’ escheatment processes. Inactive bank accounts are typically closed after three years, and funds are given to the state to hold until you claim them.

You can't compare an inactive bank account or credit card with a monthly subscription.

They do. I bought a house with a cheque. It was the only cheque I’d ever written and it bounced. The bank had closed the account without telling me.

Fun times.

So did the bank close an account with a lot of money in it, or did you write a cheque for an empty account?

Ive slightly misstated it - they closed the cheque function on the account (although the account is still called a ‘cheque account’ now, 10+ years later). The account was active but no longer had a cheque book associated with it. However I had a physical cheque book.

Cheques basically don’t exist here in NZ now.

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