A few weeks ago I posted a rant about the stupidity of Bank of America and the monthly maintenance fee they charge on some MyAccess checking accounts. In my reasearch I found that although the MyAccess checking normally has an account maintenance fee if you don’t have a direct deposit, they were currently offering MyAccess checking with no maintenance fee or direct deposit requirement if you opened the account online. Unfortunately Bank of America would not apply those terms to our existing account, and said the only way we could get those terms was to open a new account.

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.