ING Direct is one of the oldest online banks with a website unsurpassed for usability and an interest rate several times higher than the national average. If you are a new customer, simply use one of the referral links below and open your account with a deposit of at least $250. You will get a bonus of $25 credited to your account (there’s your 10% return) and one of my kids (the referrals are from their accounts) will get $10-$20 for referring you.

Orange Savings Account – Links expire 5/7/2010

• Orange Savings Referral
• Orange Savings Referral
• Orange Savings Referral
• Orange Savings Referral
• Orange Savings Referral

Electric Orange Checking Account – Links expire 5/7/2010

• Electric Orange Checking Referral
• Electric Orange Checking Referral
• Electric Orange Checking Referral
• Electric Orange Checking Referral
• Electric Orange Checking Referral

Business Orange Savings Account – Links expire 4/29/2010

• Business Orange Savings Referral
• Business Orange Savings Referral
• Business Orange Savings Referral
• Business Orange Savings Referral
• Business Orange Savings Referral

If you see a message at the top of the ING signup page saying the link is invalid or expired, it means it has probably already been used. Just use one of the other links to complete the signup. Thanks!

Rules of the game: Bonuses are only paid for accounts that are opened with an initial deposit of at least $250. Initial deposit does not include bonus. The $25 bonus is available only for new accounts with a new Customer as primary owner. Only one bonus will be provided per household. Bonus starts earning interest upon account opening, but is unavailable for withdrawal for 30 days.

You can open a free account where the service fee is waived if you do five debit card transactions per month or have an active business credit card (meaning there was a balance at some point in the statement period) linked to the account. To open the account you either need a business license or you have to be a licensed professional (attorney, accountant, etc.).

Be warned that you have to go in the branch for this and depending on the representative you work with this could take up to an hour as they probe you for information on your business and opportunities to sell other products. However, $200 is well worth an hour of my time.

I debated whether to bother with BofA anymore, but ultimately decided I liked the convenient branch access for ATMs and depositing small checks and dollar coins and opened the new account. I’m going in today to close the old account and transfer the funds to the new account.

Now for the bonus…BofA is currently offering a $75 bonus for opening a MyAccess checking account online using the promo code CH75OL1 and funding the account with $125. The full terms are listed on BofA’s website here. Based on the terms you have to be a new checking customer, although I signed up anyway to see if I would get the bonus (the old account had my wife as the primary account holder, so perhaps I’ll slip through). I’ll probably get refused, but since I was going to open the account anyway there is no harm in trying.

A couple of other helpful notes:

1. You can fund the new accounts online using a credit card (the website says debit card but my Schwab Visa went through just fine) for up to $1,000 per account and earn reward points. I opened the checking and a savings and funded each for $1,000, resulting in a total of $2,000 charged to my card and $40 in cash back.
2. If you are opening the checking you should consider opening the savings as well to take advantage of the Keep the Change program. The program itself is okay – your debit card purchases get rounded up to the next dollar with the extra amount being transferred from your savings to your checking, and BofA will normally match 5% of the KTC amount. However, in the first three months you earn a match of 100% of the transfer up to $250, and you can reach the $250 pretty easily paying bills online in $1.01 increments.

Unfortunately for us, this isn’t foolproof. When we opened our monthly statement for February, we saw that we had been charged the $8.95 monthly maintenance fee. This was partially because we forgot to reset our automated transfer (our system makes us reset the transfer after so many months) and partially because the statement closed four days earlier than it did last month. We had another electronic transfer hit the account, but only after the statement for the month had closed.

Not ready to admit defeat, I call customer service to request a fee waiver. True to their usual level of no-service, the automated system said there was a long wait to speak to a rep and then uncerimoniously disconnected the call. So I then used the online chat to request the credit, and only after requesting a supervisor did I get the fee waived.

While I was waiting for the online customer service rep, I just happened to review what the fee structure was on my account if I were opening the account today. Guess what? If you open online, there is no monthly maintenance fee or direct deposit or minimum balance requirement. Armed with this I asked if I could have these terms applied to my current account I was told that was only for new accounts, and when I asked if I would have to close the old account and open a new account to avoid the monthly fee I was told that is what I would need to do. What a waste!

So here’s my dilemma: do I close this account (I am out of paper checks anyway, but I think 5+ years to use 50 checks is a decent run) and open a new Bank of America account to simply avoid the fee, or do I tell Bank of America to go screw and take my business elsewhere? I’ve been trying to simplify anyway, so I am thinking we should just use our credit union account for this type of stuff, but having so many BofA branches around is very convenient, especially when trying to spread around those dollar coin deposits. What to do?

$150 PlainsCapital Bank Free Checking Offer

Here’s the details:

To qualify for the $50 bonus, you must open a new PlainsCapital Bank Free Checking Account by Feb. 19, 2010, with a minimum deposit of $50 in new funds (e.g., money not currently held at PlainsCapital Bank). The $50 bonus will be automatically deposited into your new account within 10 business days. To qualify for the $100 bonus, you must set up direct deposit into the new account within 60 days of account opening. Once direct deposit is set up and a deposit is made, the $100 bonus will be automatically deposited into your new account within 10 business days.  Bonuses cannot be considered the minimum opening deposit. Limit one offer per customer. Checking account to remain open for 90 days or the account could be subject to an early closing fee. Account is subject to approval. Bonus is considered interest and must be reported on IRS Form 1099-INT.

UPDATE 1/14/2010 3:05pm: It looks like they have completely taken down the offer from their website. You may want to call to see if they will still honor this offer in-branch before making the drive over to one of their locations.

But if you disagree with a company’s business practices, is a boycott the most effective means of jabbing a stick in their eye? I would submit to you that it isn’t. You may do the most damage to the offending company by being what Best Buy termed several years ago as a “devil customer”. Best Buy determined that some of their customers who bought high-priced items or overpriced accessories without a sale were “angel customers”, but there was a certain percentage that were unprofitable customers that were considered “devil customers”. Included in the behaviors of the devil customer were taking advantage of price-match policies and only buying loss leader items (items sold below cost to get you into the store with the hope you’ll buy other items at regular price). Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson was quoted as saying, “They can wreak enormous economic havoc.”

So how can this be applied to protest companies you don’t like? Simply be a devil! For retail stores don’t boycott the store, but go there and only buy obvious loss leaders. If it is a store like Walmart with a price-match policy, go and price-match other stores’ loss leaders. Buy nothing that will actually make money for the store - save those items for their competitors and let those stores reap the profit.

Taking this concept back to banks, do everything you can to make sure the bank doesn’t make money on you. Move your money elsewhere unless they are paying an extremely high promotional rate that they are likely losing money on. Take advantage of promotional offers to open checking accounts and credit cards for bonus money or other perks, then only use the account enough to qualify for the bonus and avoid services fees and as soon as you are allowed cancel the account. If you do the dollar coin hustle, use an account over there to dump off your coins and make them eat the expense of handling them. Basically do anything that will cost them money but where you won’t incur any fees.

Think of it this way: if you boycott a company, they just don’t make any money off of you. But if you are a devil customer to a company, not only do they not make money off of you but they actually lose money by your having a relationship with them.

Here’s her story: she had her wallet with her drivers license and debit card stolen in early November. Before she even realized it had happened, the fraudsters used the license and debit card to cash forged checks against her account. Note they didn’t forge checks drawn on her account, but they forged someone else’s checks and used her account to cash them against. She found out when she got an overdraft alert from her bank (Wells Fargo) and promptly contacted the bank to alert them to the scam and filed a police report. Wells Fargo ultimately opened them a new checking account  and closed the old account that had been compromised.

So that’s the end of the tale, right? Nope! Because the fraudsters are still running around with her ID and know she banks with Wells Fargo, they simply ran the scam again last week and cashed forged checks against the new account. Now she’s fighting with Wells Fargo again to get the mess straightened out and the funds returned. They are now talking about opening a third account with a teller alert attached to supposedly prevent this from happening yet again.

So what does this story illustrate? Two things:

1. When something like this happens, it is best just to move your primary account to another bank. In this instance changing the account number does no good because the fraudsters still have her picture ID and know she is a customer of the bank. Because it is typical for customers to not know their account number, it is common practice for bank tellers to use the picture ID to look up the account. That’s how this fraud was perpetrated a second time even though the old account was closed.
2. Any safeguard depending on the teller is of minimal effectiveness. I say this as a former bank teller. A teller alert or note on an account does little good if the teller never reads it. When the bank is busy and customers are lined up as far as the eye can see, most tellers will just press whatever button they need to clear the alert and complete the transaction. This is especially true of tellers working the drive-thru lanes. The limited visibility of the customer created by the way most drive-thru lanes are configured (especially when you are dealing with the farthest lanes and/or the passenger as the accountholder) and the desire to get customers in and out fast also limits the effectiveness of an ID check. If a bank manager tells you a teller alert will prevent fraudulent activity on your account, they are either lying or stupid because they should know better.

Although one of my resolutions is to eliminate unnecessary accounts, there is a lot of wisdom in having a secondary checking account that you can use in this type of situation and/or keeping most of your funds in an account other than your primary checking account. In any case if this happens to you, it is probably best to retreat to a different bank and hope the scammers don’t follow you there.

According to this article on Bloomberg, Fifth Third Bank has instituted a $19 charge for NOT using your card. Additionally, Citi is starting to charge some customers with low activity levels on their accounts higher interest rates. On top of that many issuers such as Bank of America are starting to experiment with charging annual fees on credit card accounts where there may not have been one before.

For those of us that have built up a pile of unused accounts over the years, this may be a good reminder to cancel many of those accounts we no longer use. It helps reduce the possibility of being blindsided by fees and reduces you risk of fraudulent activity as well. On top of that, it eliminates all those mailings from the credit card company and leaves you with fewer accounts to have to track.

Will there be a credit score hit? Perhaps, although it may be smaller than you would expect, especially if you have several other accounts that are open and active. Just remember that the length of your credit history and the percentage of your credit lines that are utilized are the main factors here, so it is better to keep older and larger accounts.  Two things to consider doing are to request changing your card to a different program instead of closing the account entirely and consolidating existing credit lines with the same issuer.

Since we have no plans to apply for credit in the near future, we made the decision that downsizing to only a handful of accounts is our best course of action. The extra peace and security that comes from having fewer accounts is worth the hit of a few credit score points in my opinion.

Here are the main points to remember on this offer:
1. Minimum deposit of $100 in new funds not currently held by Chase.
2. The $125 bonus will be deposited into your account within 10 days of your initial direct deposit.
3. Within 60 calendar days of account opening, you must initiate a monthly direct deposit which includes payroll, pension, Social Security, or other government benefits.
4. There is a limit of 1 personal checking account-related reward per customer, per calendar year.
5. Your checking account must remain open for a minimum of 6 months, or the reward will be debited from the account at closing.
6. Chase Checking has no monthly service fee when you have a direct deposit or 5 or more debit card purchases post to your account each statement period.

I have done these bonuses multiple times without issue. You can read about previous Chase bonus offers here.

No direct deposit? No worries! Read about how to fake the direct deposit and get the bonus money on this post.

Want to make another easy $50? Open an ING Direct account! Details here.