Jeff Siarto - Web Designer

5 Jun 09

Avoid Fifth Third Business Checking Accounts

Banks love to charge fees—the nations banks and credit unions bring in about $40 bil­lion in over­draft charges per year and that num­ber is only going to increase as banks scram­ble to get their books back into the black. Recently I expe­ri­enced my own over­draft night­mare when I real­ized that I had made a small—$10—Pay­Pal trans­fer from a Fifth Third busi­ness check­ing account that I was no longer using. I would have closed the account months ago, except Fifth Third wanted to charge me $50 for that ser­vice. Instead, I with­drew all my money and left it open to avoid the ridicu­lous fee.

At the begin­ning of the week I was in East Lans­ing, Michi­gan (where I went to school and started my com­pany) tak­ing care of some per­sonal busi­ness. On my way through town I stopped at the Post Office to clear out my PO box. That’s where I found the over­draft let­ter they had sent me—six weeks ago. I went straight to the local branch know­ing that fees were going to be huge. When the banker brought up my account, it was at -$212.00. The fee break­down went like this: $25 for the first over­draft, $48 for daily over­drafts, $8 for each day that the account was over­drawn and a $17 fee for my account being in the neg­a­tive. Insane.

Assum­ing that they would be com­pas­sion­ate and real­ize that this was a mis­take, I payed for the $10 over­draft, $25 for the fee and then sub­mit­ted a request to have the remain­ing fees reversed. No such luck—they were unwill­ing to budge on the fees. I finally talked to the branch man­ager who was will­ing to knock off about $60 in fees, but because it was obvi­ous I wasn’t using the account any­more they were reluc­tant to do me any favors. I ended up pay­ing about $160 for a $10 over­draft and am now acutely aware of where a good chunk of that $40 bil­lion comes from.

I don’t think Fifth Third is the only bank doing this crap, but they are one of the worst when it comes to fees. I also find this espe­cially dis­turb­ing given that Fifth Third took about $3.4 bil­lion in bailout money. I would rec­om­mend avoid­ing them for busi­ness and per­sonal check­ing prod­ucts (or any­thing, for that mat­ter) and remem­ber, there is no such thing as a free check­ing account.

tagged: ,

3

  • Kevin

    Fifth third is ter­ri­ble, they have the worst inter­est rates and they also wanted to charge us $100 to close our 2 busi­ness accounts with them. We just with­drew all our money and left the accounts open, but after your expe­ri­ence we’ll prob­a­bly bite the bul­let and pay the extor­tion fees to close them any­way. We moved all our money over to inde­pen­dent bank (Michi­gan com­pany) and we’ve been very happy there so far.

  • Jeff Siarto

    I do not under­stand the $50 charge for clos­ing an account. No other bank I’ve ever done busi­ness with has poli­cies like that—nor was I told that up-​​front (although I’m sure it was in the fine print).

  • LJ

    I have had prob­lems with fifth third for years, after I moved myself and my busi­ness to a new loca­tion. No mat­ter who I spoke to about it, no mat­ter how many times I was assured that the prob­lem was solved they con­tin­u­ously sent state­ments and impor­tant let­ters to my old address. They seem utterly inca­pable of cor­rect­ing the prob­lem. It’s such a has­sle what with my busi­ness account, per­sonal account, sav­ings accounts and credit accounts, over­draft pro­tec­tion accounts, I don’t want to have to change banks and have to go through the credit checks and every­thing to get every­thing that I want again. At the same time as a busi­ness owner, to have to deal with this level of incom­pe­tence, it’s infu­ri­at­ing and it’s a seri­ous prob­lem to not recieve this mail. Absolutely makes my blood boil with rage. It keeps crop­ping up, again and again, not get­ting my mail. This has been going on for YEARS now.

Recommended

Also of Interest