alee

Yes, but this is NetBank, where they charge account closing fees on all accounts in the first place. I've never heard of another bank that charged account closing fees no matter how long the account had been open. As I said, I also don't trust them not to charge me for having less than the minimum balance in my money market account. Has anyone had a smooth experience, or trouble, with closing NetBank accounts?

I've had my NetBank checking and money markets accounts open for over six months, so it's now time for me to close them. I'd like to know the best way to do this while incurring as few charges as possible.

If I just transfer all of the money out of my accounts to another bank, and then send them a letter by snail-mail telling them to close my account, will NetBank charge me for having less than $500 in my money market account? Will they demand the $7.50 account closing fees for each account if I don't leave that in my accounts?

Is there a better way to close my accounts?

You want a NetBank horror story? I'm still in the middle of one. Late in December, I opened checking and money market accounts at NetBank to get the $150 in bonuses. (I wasn't planning on opening a CD to get the $25 bonus for that.) When I tried to fund the accounts via online transfer from their "Account Status" page, the links simply didn't do anything when I clicked on them.

I received a large packet from them in the mail on New Year's Eve, and again couldn't fund my new accounts from their "Account Status" page, but I saw that I could set up online access and account aggregation. However, it wouldn't let me make any transfers, including from my accounts at other banks to my NetBank accounts, because I hadn't funded my NetBank accounts yet. So I decided to put in the money from outside. I went to my credit union, added my NetBank accounts to the account aggregation, chose the NetBank routing number from several choices they had for NetBank, and it found my account numbers from the aggregation and was then going to verify my account numbers. I also tried linking my NetBank accounts to my PayPal accounts.

My credit union verifies accounts at other banks for ACH transfers in mostly the same way that PayPal, ING Direct, VirtualBank, HSBC, and probably many other banks do: by making two small, random deposits that you then have to look up and tell them the amounts of. The difference is that my credit union makes two withdrawals the same day for the same amounts as the deposits. When I checked my accounts at NetBank a few days later, they registered that they had processed one withdrawal on each account, rejected one withdrawal on each account, and charged $30 for each withdrawal, processed or rejected, for a total of $120 in service charges. There was no sign of the test deposits from my credit union. Nor was there any sign of the test deposits from PayPal.

My credit union's Web site said that the test deposits had been rejected due to an incorrect routing number or account number. PayPal said the same thing. In both cases, they wouldn't link to my NetBank accounts for ACH transfers, so I couldn't make deposits through them, not that I would want to under the circumstances. NetBank insists that my credit union only made withdrawals, and not deposits, and refuses to remove the service charges. They are demanding that I get written proof from my credit union that they tried to make the test deposits first, which I'm trying to get. NetBank has also sent me two letters by mail for each account warning of the overdrafts, threatening to report them to ChexSystems after 30 days, and that it would go on my credit report. For these, they have spent $1.27 in postage alone, nearly as much as the two withdrawals they actually paid out.

Are other people finding that NetBank systematically drops ACH deposits initiated from outside, while accepting withdrawals? If so, why? To generate overdraft fees and below minimum balance fees? Who can I report this to besides the BBB?

I have nearly all of my ING Direct referrals with the $25 bonus still available. They now require a minimum opening deposity of $250 to get the bonus, and the current interest rate is 3.50% APY. Please email your full name and email address to alee-ingdirect at stanfordalumni dot ORG with "ING Direct" somewhere in the subject line if you'd like an ING Direct referral.

I also have nearly all of my VirtualBank referrals still available. VirtualBank's eMoney Market account is similar to ING Direct's Orange Savings account. The current interest rate is 3.55% APY, and the referral bonus for the person opening the account is $20. Also, the opening deposit is a fixed $100, which you can withdraw after a month. You can of course have both ING Direct and VirtualBank accounts. Please email your full name and email address to alee-virtualbank at stanfordalumni dot ORG with "VirtualBank" somewhere in the subject line, if you'd like a VirtualBank referral.

I also have some invitations for 30gigs.com, which currently offers free 30 GB web-based email accounts. They mention adding online file storage in the future. I can throw in one of these invitations if you'd like.