Tag Archives: accounts

Joint No Fee PC Financial Accounts are Dis – Jointed

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Not that long ago, my husband and I opened a joint no fee chequing account at PC Financial. We linked it to our joint bank account at one of the Big 5 Canadian banks to make it easier to transfer in funds. I set up some bills and paid them successfully from the account. I also managed to order some new cheques and have used them to pay for several school-related expenses. But every so often I’ve encountered a surprising quirk. It appears to me that the account isn’t really being treated like a “joint” account at all. In fact, it seems rather dis – jointed at times.

Two Joint Chequing Accounts are Linked by PC Financial but Only One Spouse Knows It

The first clue that something was odd was when weeks after my husband requested an electronic link between our Big 5 bank joint chequing account and our PC Financial joint chequing account nothing seemed to be done. Daily for two weeks, I would login to check whether I could transfer money into our account from our other account.

Finally I used my brain and considered why it might not be linked. I had my husband login to the PC Financial account using his card number and his password: and there it was: the option to make a transfer to or from our Big 5 bank account.

Why didn’t this option show up when I logged in using my card and password?  As both accounts are joint, it doesn’t make any sense to me. I explore this further in PC Financial’s Computer Can’t Believe My Husband and I Want to Share Our Joint Bank Account.

Honey, Could You Please Pay That Gas Bill from our PC Financial Bank Account?

The next clue that this Joint account was being treated as two separate accounts came when we needed to pay the bills. Usually I pay them because I am a major control freak, er, like to stay on top of our financial details. Because of another commitment, I asked my husband to pay a bill instead.

Obligingly, he logged in and clicked on the “bill payments” link. Instead of being greeted by the usual list of various bloodsuckers, er, companies whose services we purchase, he saw a cold blank screen stating:

“To pay bills, you must Add bills to your personal bill list.”

Yes, he would have to re-enter the same information I had already put in for each company if he wanted to pay all of our regular bills. This is a JOINT account. Doesn’t that seem rather silly?

Why Don’t You Just Use Each Other’s Cards and Passwords?

If I use my husband’s card and password to login to our joint account, he is liable if there is ANY security breach and theft from our account. So, no, sharing passwords is not an option.

Only One of Us Gets Warned of Cool Deals

The final clue was when I was perusing the Personal Finance section on Red Flag Deals. Someone announced a 2% interest deal on new contributions to a PC Financial Account. They said they received a personal message about the promotion when they logged in to their account.

I was a bit puzzled when I logged in to our account and didn’t find a similar message. I re-checked Red Flag, wondering if the information was about some old, expired deal. No. It started in July 2013.

When my long-suffering husband had time, I asked him to login to his side of our “joint” account. Sure enough, he received the promotional message!

Are These Problems Bad Enough to Cancel our PC Financial No Fee Account?

I don’t consider any of these problems to be so severe that we will withdraw our business from PC Financial. But I do find them all irritating. When an account is joint, I expect it to be equitable. It’s annoying to feel like a second-class citizen because my online bank treats me as a lesser stakeholder in our joint account.

The solution seems simple to me. Have one account number to login with and one password. Both parties should use it. If necessary, have the option of a secondary method of access based on the debit card number and its unique password.

It doesn’t seem particularly reasonable to me that to make the system work as it is now, I either have to get my husband to do all the transfers and get me to pay all the bills, or to have to submit more paperwork to set it up so I can do the transfers and to have to re-key all sorts of account numbers so he can pay the bills.

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Does anything bother you about your PC Financial no fee account? Please share your experiences with a comment.

How to Download Your Transaction History for an ING Direct Bank Account to a Spreadsheet

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Many people keep track of their finances using a program like Quicken. Others, like me, who are incredibly cheap, er, frugal use a spreadsheet. Either way, it’s a bit easier and often more accurate to download the info directly from your bank than to type it in line by line. Here’s how you can download what’s been happening in your Tangerine, formerly called ING Direct, bank account.

Copying your Tangerine Bank Account Transaction History Onto Your Computer

To Login to your Tangerine account/s

  1. Go to: http://www.tangerine.ca/en/
  2. Click on I’m a Client, Let Me In!.
  3. Enter your Client Number, banking Card Number or Username in the Log me in box.
    Click on the Go button.
  4. If necessary, in the Your Secret Question: box, type the Answer: to the question.
    Click on the Next button.
  5. If the Your Picture and the Your Phrase fields are correct, if applicable, in the Your PIN box, type your personal identification number.
    Click on the Go button.

To  Download Your Transaction History

  1. Click on the View My Accounts link.
  2. Scroll down to the bottom of that screen.
    Click on the Download Transactions button.
  3. From the drop-down list select the account for which you wish to download the history.
  4. In the Download Information section, select either
    • Get all from last download (which presumably translated from the Dutch-English means “Get all the data since the last download”; or
    • Get all for the following date range:
      If you choose a period, from the drop-down lists select the start date and end date day, month and year.
  5. In the Available Download Formats section, from the drop-down list select
    • QFX Quicken
    • Microsoft Money; or
    • Excel/Other software, CSV

    Yes, just like PC Financial they support downloading to Microsoft Money even though Microsoft no longer supports Money itself.
    CSV means comma separated values. In other words, they will put a comma between each entire number. So the two numbers one hundred thousand and the number ten would be sent as: 100000,10

  6. Click the Next button
  7. Review the information on the screen called Here is the information you selected for Download
    If it looks correct, click on the Download button.
  8. In the SomeName.CSV window, select either
    • Open with; or
    1. If you select Open, you must also select a program from the drop-down list.
    • Save File
    1. Click on the OK button.
    2. If applicable, select where you want to save the file.
    3. Click on the Save button.
  9. When you are finished using Tangerine click on the Log Me Out button.
    For increased security, close your browser session.

In my case the saved file was called Chequing.CSV.

CSV means comma separated text. If you open the file in a spreadsheet it will put one line of data on one line of the spreadsheet. It will put the data after each comma into a new column.

You will likely find some columns are full of ######s when you open your file in a spreadsheet. This is because the information is too large to fit the width of the column. To correct this, hover the mouse over the small vertical line between the Letter Names at the top of the column. Click and holding the mouse key down, drag the line to widen the column.

What is Reported for my Tangerine Transaction History

Cool! The info is different than that reported by PC Financial.

The columns reported are

  • The Date
  • The type of transaction
  • Name; a description of what happened. For example Bill Payment AMEX
  • Memo; another description of what happened
  • Amount; the dollars that moved in or out of the account

The types of Transactions are

The types of Memos showing up for my account include

  • Transferred
    This is used when I transfer money between accounts.
  • BILLPO
    This just means I paid a bill, not that I am P.O.d about it, though it does make me smile to think that might be what they meant. I wonder who programmed that?
  • Cheque Order Fee
    This was 0 because I only ordered the free first cheques. I use PC Financial to get as many free cheques as I need.
  • There may be other codes that were not applicable to me.

How Accurate is the Transaction History Information?

I found the way PC Financial reported my credit card transactions resulted in the numbers being in the wrong column.

The Tangerine information, however, is all lining up properly.

How Risky Is It to Download and Store This Information on my PC?

The file does not include any of my credit card numbers, or the account numbers for businesses I paid bills for online. For example, it does not list my Cable TV account number.

The file did not include any information about my bank account number or my bank balance.

This information, therefore, is not very risky to store on my home computer. However, I would suggest storing it instead on a DVD or USB stick and that storing that somewhere safe. No sense in making it too easy for financial crooks, er, criminals.

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Do you download your bank info from Tangerine to a money management program or a spreadsheet? Have you ever had any hiccups? Please share your experiences with a comment.

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