Author Archives: BetCrooks

Which is Better ING Direct or PC Financial: Part Two Cheques, Interest, Overdrafts and Chequing

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After we opened a chequing account at Tangerine and a President’s Choice No Fee Chequing Account we discovered they are not identical. So which is better for our chequing and cheques?

I Write a Lot of Cheques. Is Tangerine’s Chequing Account or PC Financial’s No Fee Account Better for Me?

I find it a bit amusing to read posts on sites like RedFlagDeals where people brag that they never write cheques and they put all of their purchases on plastic to get points. I’m sure it works for them: I just doubt they have children. So far this new school year, I’ve written 17 cheques for my kids. That’s just in 3 months. And that doesn’t include all the cash sent in for various charitable “Toonie Tuesday” days and to buy milk tickets.

The cost of cheques from our “Big 5” Canadian bank was what led us to opening our President’s Choice Financial No Fee Chequing account. Believe it or not, you can order free cheques for your PCF No Fee account. As many as you need!

Tangerine, unfortunately, does not offer unlimited free cheques. You can get your first book free for a Chequing account. After that, though, you have to buy the cheques. They are reasonably priced compared to a “Big 5” bank, though.

Clear winner: PC Financial.

I Keep a Large Balance in My Chequing Account. Which Pays Higher Interest: Tangerine or PC Financial No Fee?

and

I Keep a Very Low Balance in My Chequing Account: Which Pays Higher Interest: Tangerine or PC Financial No Fee?

This one unfortunately can vary as both Tangerine and PC Financial like to offer short-term higher interest rates to lure in new customers. The following analysis is based on their regular posted rates.

The rates have changed since the post was written. Please check the article: Which Bank Offers the Best No Fee Chequing Account: PC Financial or Tangerine? for a comparison of the rates as of April 2017. The result if you prefer the summary is:
If you keep about this amount in your chequing account

  • 0 – $12 000   you earn the most interest at Tangerine
  • $13 000 and up you earn the most interest at PC Financial

Today, in December 2015 2013, [and still in June 2014]

the regular posted rate for a Tangerine chequing account is

  • 0.25 % for a balance between $0 – 49 999.99
  • 0.65 % for a balance of $50 000 – 99 999.99
  • 0.75 % for a balance of $100 000 or more

the regular posted rate for a President’s Choice Financial No Fee chequing account is

  • 0.05% for a balance between $0 – 1 000
  • 0.1% for a balance of $1 000.01 – 5 000
  • 0.15% for a balance of $5 000.01 – 10 000
  • 0.25% for a balance of $10 000.01 – 25 000
  • 0.5% for a balance of $25 000.01 and up

In both cases you only get the higher rate on the amount of money you have in the account above the previous tier.

For example, if you have $55 000 in your chequing account, you get about

  • at Tangerine.ca
    50 000 x .0025 + 5000 x .01 or about $175 per year
  • at PCF
    1000 x .0005 + 4000 x .001 + 5000 x .0015 + 15000 x .0025 + 30 000 x .005 or about $200 per year

Interest is actually calculated daily and paid monthly which means it will compound so these numbers are just approximations.

If you keep a low balance, say below $10 000, Tangerine will pay you more interest per year as it has a higher interest rate for low balances.

If you keep a high balance of over $60 000, again, Tangerine will usually pay you more interest per year.

Between $30 000 and $60 000, though, PC Financial pays you the most interest!

Winner? It depends on what balance you usually keep in your account.

I Bounce Cheques but Never by Much or For Long: Which is Better a Tangerine Chequing account or a PCF No Fee Account?

OK I have no personal experience with this one. I’ve never bounced a cheque and it’s unlikely I ever will. I’m also one of those obsessive people who arrives 7 minutes early for every meeting or gathering. (But don’t worry, I never ring the doorbell early because I know most hosts are running late.)

So this part is based on the information listed on the respective websites for Tangerine and PC Financial.

First, why are you bouncing a cheque? If it’s because of a miscalculation of a few dollars, then the following info may be useful. If it’s because you don’t have enough money to pay your bills and you’re bouncing a cheque for hundreds of dollars, you probably aren’t going to find a solution here.

The Tangerine Chequing Account Whoops Protection Plan

UPDATE: As of August 2015, Tangerine no longer offers free Whoops! overdraft protection. They do offer a for-fee and for-high-interest-charges overdraft protection but it is essentially the same as that offered by PC Financial. This article has more details about the new Tangerine overdraft protection.

If you pass a credit check when opening your Tangerine chequing account, you can qualify for free Whoops protection overdraft protection that costs a fee and costs a high-interest daily charge for each day you owe them money.

The Whoops plan covers an overdraft of up to $250. In other words, they will let the cheque clear your account so you won’t get in trouble with the person you paid or the other bank.

Next, they will email you a notice right away stating you are overdrawn.

You have 30 days from when the account balance dropped below 0 to pay the overdraft.
After that 30 days, you will be charged a $2.50 fee for every 30 days that the account balance is under $0.

Once the account balance is under $0 no new cheques or payments will be allowed to clear.

Whoops covers “future dated bill payments and email money transfers, pre-authorized debits, and cheques” as of December 2013. They can change these features, though, so check every so often that they still apply. [They still do as of June 14, 2014.]

PC Financial’s No Fee Chequing Account Offers Optional Overdraft ProtectioN

PC Financial’s No Fee account does not offer free overdraft protection.

When you open your account, you can apply for Overdraft Protection. The maximum protection available is for $5 000. Not all applicants will qualify for the maximum. We were told by the agent when we opened our account that a credit check would be necessary to apply for overdraft protection.

For clients with overdraft, the account balance must be brought above $0 at least once a month.

If you use the overdraft service, you will incur a charge and a fixed interest rate on the overdraft balance. In December 2015 2013, the charge is $4.97 each month that you have an overdraft. The interest rate charged on the overdraft is 19% per annum. Ouch! [This is still the posted rate on November 9, 2105 and June 14, 2014 and December 17 2015.]

As I described in Part One Moving Money, Transfers and Holds, it takes a full business day to get money from your PC Financial savings account to your PC Financial chequing account. That makes it much easier to bounce a cheque accidentally. Tangerine, however, lets you transfer money instantly from your ING investment savings account to your chequing account. That can help reduce the risk of a bounce. (Some customers have told me that if you telephone PC Financial you can actually get money moved instantly to your chequing account from your savings account if there is a really good reason; I have not personally tried this approach.)

Can I View My Used Cheques Online for Free?

With both the Tangerine Chequing and the PCF No Fee account you can look at a scan of your cashed cheques online for free. This is great for joint accounts where you can’t remember who wrote a specific cheque and what it paid for.

Can I Pay My Bills Online for Free?

With both the Tangerine Chequing and the PCF No Fee account you can pay bills online for free.

Can I Pay by Debit for Free?

With both the Tangerine Chequing and the PCF No Fee account you can pay by debit at stores for free.

Paying by debit with the No Fee account at a Loblaws or affiliate store will also earn you PC Points which can be redeemed for groceries.

What ABMs Can I Use for Free?

For PC Financial No Fee accounts, you can use the banking machines at PC Financial kiosks, and the banking machines owned by CIBC, for free.

For Tangerine Chequing accounts, you can use ABM machines that belong to the Scotiabank ABM Network for free. As of September 30, 2014, you will NOT be able to continue to use the Exchange network machines for free for Tangerine chequing accounts.

UPDATE December 2015
For a withdrawal from another bank’s ABM machines in Canada, Tangerine charges a fee. The bank that owns that ABM will probably charge another additional fee, often $3-7 so be careful!

Similarly, PC Financial will charge a fee for withdrawals from a non-PCF, non-CIBC terminal in Canada. There will be another additional fee charged by the bank that owns the ATM.

For a withdrawal from another bank’s ABM machine in the US and other countries, Tangerine charges a fee. The bank that owns that ABM will likely charge another additional fee and it may be quite high. Some ABMs belonging to the Global ATM Alliance will not charge a fee but you’d have to check with Tangerine about exceptions.

Similarly PC Financial will charge a fee for withdrawals in the US or other countries in addition to the fee charged by the bank that owns the ATM.

Email Money Transfers and Interac e-Transfer EMTs

I don’t understand the email money transfer system well enough yet to comment much on it. Tangerine says it offers no-fee free email money transfers for Chequing accounts. I’ll have to test what that means for another article.

It costs $1.00 to send an Interac e-Transfer EMT from your Tangerine chequing account. It is free to receive transfers in to your account. Again, I don’t understand these enough yet to comment.

PC Financial has Interac e-Transfer EMTs. It costs $1.50 to send an Interac e-Transfer EMT. (It’s not clear whether there is any charge to receive a transfer.)

Can I Get a Bank Draft?

At Tangerine you can order a bank draft but there is a fee. It will be couriered to you, not to the person you want to pay, nor can you pick it up except at one of their very few locations/Cafes. The Cafes cannot issue drafts: you can have a draft couriered to the Café for pickup though. In December 2013 [June 14, 2014] they quote a price of $10 for a draft and a requirement of 2-3 business days to courier it to most locations.

At PC Financial you can get a Bank Draft for $7.50 [Dec 2015 June 14, 2014] plus any required courier charges.

What Kind of Statements Can I Get for my Chequing Account

You can view and print your bank statements online for both Tangerine Chequing and PC Financial No Fee accounts.

For a fee you can also have a paper statement mailed to you for a No Fee account.

A Surprising Fee

OK this may just be surprising to me, but PC Financial charges a fee to negotiate a cheque written in US dollars or any other foreign currency. This is in addition to the fee built into the exchange rate for the foreign funds. The fee is $7.50 for a cheque for under $1000 and $15 for a cheque for over $1000.

I believe this means if you write on a cheque you issue that it is payable in, say, US dollars, they will charge this fee. I don’t think this fees applies to when you try to cash a cheque in US dollars payable to you. I’ve sent an email to ask for clarification.

So Which is Better: Tangerine’s Chequing or PC Financial’s No Fee Chequing Account?

Obviously, this one will depend on how you use your chequing account.

For us, I would say the Tangerine account is best except for one problem: they don’t offer free cheques. Until my kids outgrow the school system, this is a deal breaker.

Tangerine otherwise suits us best because

  • I like the bill payment on screen layout
  • it allows us to instantaneously transfer money from our investment savings account to our chequing account (and back!)
  • a Scotiabank branch with an ABM is closer to us than a CIBC or PCF ABM
  • we keep a fairly low balance in our chequing account and it does pay some interest
  • we can deposit cheques online using their photo submission app but we can now do that at PC Financial too

PC Financial might suit others best who

  • want lots of free paper cheques
  • keep a very high balance (between $30 000 to $60 000)
  • can reach a CIBC or PCF ABM easier than a ScotiaBank ABM
  • need overdraft protection up to $5 000 and are prepared to pay for it (but you can get some overdraft protection for a fee from Tangerine too)
  • would like to collect PC Points for paying by debit at Loblaws and affiliated stores

Of course since these are both no fee accounts with no minimum balances, you can even be like us and try one of each!

Be aware that both banks will charge a high fee if you have no activity in your account for 1 year (Tangerine) or 2 years (PC Financial). An easy way to keep an account active is to set up an automatic transfer of $1 in to or out of an account each six months.

Related Reading

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Do you cheque with PC Financial’s No Fee account or do you use Tangerine? Please share your experiences with other readers by leaving a comment.
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An Emergency Only Cell Phone: Pros and Cons of Petro-Canada Mobility

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I understand that most of the world now has a fully-featured cell phone capable of accessing the internet, providing GPS coordinates, making phone calls, sending text messages and probably initiating the count-down launch sequence for an asteroid-blasting rocket capable of protecting Earth from another dinosaur-exterminating-scale impact. That didn’t stop me from wanting a cell phone
(a) from which I could call CAA and 911;
(b) that I wouldn’t care (much) if I lost it, destroyed it, or had it stolen; and
(c) that doesn’t cost much to have activated and ready to use.
The US (and most other countries) are full of these types of ‘disposable’ phones with appropriately-priced (read cheap) plans. Canada only offers a few. This is a review of some of the pros and cons of our Petro-Canada Mobility emergency only cell phone.

Why Do We have a PC Mobility Phone?

I’d love to say I did a detailed analysis of every cost, feature and fact about emergency cell phones and selected this one.

I didn’t.

We have a Petro-Canada phone because of a work situation for a family member which resulted in an incredibly huge number of Petro-Points being accumulated. Enough that it was simple to buy a Nokia and a year’s worth of activation plus some air time for “free” by using only a fraction of the points. Add to that an unexpected winter trip and the need for a way to call for help if even new snow tires couldn’t keep a grip and the decision was made.

What’s the Service Been Like with Our Petro-Canada Phone?

We’ve almost always been able to get a signal. Apparently, the carrier is Rogers based on the maps of available range.

We were unable to get a signal in some spots in the Cape Breton Highlands this summer but in other spots we could get through.

For southern Ontario highways and bi-ways we’ve had no trouble connecting to the network.

What Does the Airtime Cost?

Because this is an emergency phone we don’t get a monthly plan for it, although one is offered. Instead we buy blocks of airtime and activation.

For $100 we get 365 days of activation and $100 dollars of airtime. The calls are billed against this amount. As of December 2013, the calls are billed at $0.25 per minute for local and $0.50 per minute for long distance within Canada and the US. There is also a monthly charge for 911 service. In December 2013, that charge is $1.25 per month.

As of December 2013, outgoing text messages are

  • 10 ¢ to destinations within Canada
  • 15 ¢ to the US and
  • 35 ¢ to anywhere else in the world.

Incoming text messages are free.

If you buy a small block of minutes remember you will be paying the 911 fee even when you don’t use the phone so keep an eye on your balance. (Or an ear: they will send you a message when you’re getting low.)

Isn’t That a Lot of Money for an Emergency Phone?

Possibly. Frankly I think it’s insurance I am more likely to use than my regular auto insurance.

I consider the annual cost to be another type of insurance premium where I am betting I will need it and the insurer is betting I won’t. From that point of view, it seems a reasonable cost to me.

Does Airtime Rollover or Expire?

If you renew your phone before it expires, any balance of airtime dollars will carry forward into the new renewal time. If you forget to renew before the expiry date you will lose any dollars you still have.

I understand there’s a class action lawsuit brewing against one of the major Telecoms about this loss of air time. For now, though, there’s no law that says they can’t do this.

What Kind of Phones are Offered?

The cell phones are actually sold separately.

Remember that I wanted a phone that I could speak into and hear a reply? And that I could lose, destroy or have stolen without serious regrets?

I bought a bottom of the line Nokia with no keypad. I paid with Petro-Points but it cost about $40 to buy with cash a couple of years ago. It’s been working fine for years now and it keeps a charge for months.

I won’t list the available phones. There’s only a couple and they change from time to time. You can look at them on the http://mobility.petro-canada.ca/default.aspx site.

If you are also looking for this type of emergency phone I’d suggest looking at the phones offered with the lowest cost on the PC Mobility website. Then hop over to a review site like amazon.com and see what real people have said about that particular model.

Can I Just Buy a SIM Card from PC Mobility for my Old Phone?

Some people may have an older GSM phone they want to keep in the car as an emergency phone.

Yes you can buy a SIM card if your phone is unlocked. It has to be a GSM phone (850/1900 MHz.)

Usually you can get a SIM card for $5 at a Petro-Canada gas station. It usually costs more (about $15) to order one online.

There are no refunds on SIM cards, even if you find you don’t have the correct-type of phone after you buy it. If in doubt, talk to customer service *before* you buy the card.

PROs of the Petro-Canada Mobility Phone

  • No credit check is necessary.
  • No bills are sent. If you use up your dollar balance you can’t make a non-911 phone call and you can’t send a text message.
  • No roaming charges. OK, this one is a bit of a cheat. There are no charges because there’s no support for roaming.
  • Free incoming text messages.
  • Free voice mail.
  • Free caller id.
  • Free call waiting.
  • No system access fees. (There is an automatic non-deniable $1.25 fee per month for 911.)
  • No contract.
  • You can buy more minutes at Petro-Canada gas stations, but you will need to call a toll-free number to activate the minutes. Be sure your receipt is easy to read before leaving the gas station!
  • You can buy more minutes online if you register your phone.

CON: Very Limited Coverage in Low Population Areas

Because the phone uses the Rogers network, the range is definitely biased towards areas of high population like the corridor from London Ontario to Quebec City.

If you live, even along the TransCanada, in northern Ontario, there may not be any coverage. Check the map at
http://mobility.petro-canada.ca/images/general/coverage_national.pdf
if you don’t expect to use the phone mostly in highly populated areas.

(For comparison, here’s the Rogers GSM network map:
http://www.rogers.com/business/on/en/enterprise/rogers/coverage/ )
and the Bell map:
http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Coverage_map

To be fair, it’s not really a Petro-Canada Mobility drawback. It seems both of the major carriers in Canada don’t care to offer decent coverage to areas with low population density.

CON: You Can’t Use the Phone in the USA

Unless you are close enough to the border to pick up the Rogers carrier signal, you can’t use this phone in the US. It has no roaming abilities.

CON: Local Call Rates Are High

I suppose it’s good that there isn’t much difference in the cost between a local call and a (US and Canada only) long distance call. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean the long distance rate is low, it means the local call rate is high.

If you’re planning to make a call that’s longer than 2 minutes locally, it’s much cheaper to use a payphone for 50 cents, than pay the 25 cents per minute to use your cell phone.

Other Options to Consider

There are other providers to consider.

  • 7-11 stores are the physical location selling SpeakOut network phone services.
  • The regular Telecomm suspects all offer a prepaid phone service, including Bell and Telus.

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Do you have a ‘disposable’ cell phone instead of or in addition to your multi-purpose ‘real’ cell? Which provider do you use? Please share any cautions or concerns from your experience with a comment.