Boo to Bank of Hawaii

Boo to Bank of Hawaii was Originally Posted on January 20, 2008 by lavarock

When I moved to Hawaii I opened a checking account at Bank of Hawaii, just to deposit the check from the closing of my house on the mainland.

I realized that this was a a checking account and that I would not be getting interest and deposited perhaps $2000 many years ago. I kept the account and sometimes removed a bit of money if I needed it. Meantime, BOH loaned the money to others and made a lot of money off me. OK, I was fine with that.

Then Friday I received my statement with one addition. They charged me $5 as an inactivity fee! I went into the bank and asked them to remove the fee. They did not. I immediately closed the account!

For $5 they lost a customer for life. They didn’t seem to be worried because many other people just leave their money there. As you know, banks in general don’t care about their customers. Many banks pay less than 1% unless you have hundred of thousands of dollars there.

I take this moment to ask those who have an account with any brick and mortor bank to consider the following. If you are getting less than say 3 percent on your money, you should immediately move your acoount to somewhere you get a real rate of return.

Look at credit unions or even online banks. You do not HAVE to have a local bank if you can use an ATM for deposits. I switched my checking to an online bank (INGDIRECT)that pays me 3% for checking and higher for savings, thus getting over 10 times the interest of the local bank. You can go to a site like bankrate.com and compare checking and savings rates for many online banks and credit unions.