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Motive Customer Service & lack thereof
April 16, 2023
1:11 am
RetirEd
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Norman1: I figured it had to be something like that. When a cheque bounces, it's pretty that I wrote the cheque unless it's forged, and there have been a variety of methods used over the years to make that harder.

But if I never asked for a transfer, trying to hold me responsible would certainly make me - and lots of other folk - call FOUL!
RetireEd

RetirEd

April 16, 2023
7:58 am
Norman1
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The responsibility is shared.

Because your financial institution is not required to obtain a copy of the authorization until there is a dispute, you are responsible if you don't monitor the bank account and dispute an unauthorized pre-authorized debit within 90 days.

That was a news item many years ago. Some disreputable fitness gyms were continuing to pre-authorized debit monthly membership fees after members cancelled. People were surprised after they saw the news story, checked their bank accounts, and found their former gym had been doing the same after they had cancelled months or, in some cases, years ago!

April 19, 2023
7:30 am
RetirEd
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Norman1: We all need to keep an eye on our billings, yet businesses are increasingly setting their cash terminals to NOT print customer receipts, claiming nobody wants them. I haven't see receipts lying around businesses, though. So we have to request a reprint and end up with a longer, more annoying receipt with large print reading, "DUPLICATE" to store.

The fitness industry's bread and butter is customers who sign up and never use their memberships. Most of them would never have room for anyone to stand if many of their customers regularly attended.

The high cost and committed payment are claimed to motivate folks to exercise, but in reality it's just soaking the lazy.

A noted gym chain here in Vancouver campaigned for months to repeal the HST in BC. They succeeded. Then members had to badger them endlessly to get them to STOP billing for HST after it was repealed.

Fitness outfits everywhere habitually make it hard to cancel membership billing.
RetirEd

RetirEd

April 19, 2023
8:01 am
cgouimet
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Norman1 said
The responsibility is shared.

Because your financial institution is not required to obtain a copy of the authorization until there is a dispute, you are responsible if you don't monitor the bank account and dispute an unauthorized pre-authorized debit within 90 days.

That was a news item many years ago. Some disreputable fitness gyms were continuing to pre-authorized debit monthly membership fees after members cancelled. People were surprised after they saw the news story, checked their bank accounts, and found their former gym had been doing the same after they had cancelled months or, in some cases, years ago!  

I overheard a bar conversation a few years back where one individual claimed they'd survive less than a month if they had to only bill for actual gym use.

CGO
April 19, 2023
8:32 am
Bill
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RetirEd, I agree, it's a genius business model!

To me the fact that fitness clubs can proliferate and prosper is just one indicator of a super-affluent society.

Just called Motive, 10 second wait, asked when the 5-day hold comes off funds brought in last Wednesday, it's tomorrow. Guess we count 5 business days a bit differently, it's no big deal.

April 19, 2023
9:48 am
Norman1
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RetirEd said
Norman1: We all need to keep an eye on our billings, yet businesses are increasingly setting their cash terminals to NOT print customer receipts, claiming nobody wants them. I haven't see receipts lying around businesses, though. …

That is accurate. Most customers don't want the receipts. You'll see the receipts pile up at the register's printer at some fast food restaurants. Merchants can save money on thermal paper if they print receipts on request instead.

At some places, I need to mention that I would like the receipt. Otherwise, the cashier will take the receipt and crumple it up out of habit!

April 19, 2023
10:00 am
Bill
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So are modern people not checking their monthly credit card statement for errors? That's why I ask for the paper receipt, but am I doing something that no longer needs to be done? (I realize there are always some extremists who will want to check no matter what because 20 years ago they found a $5.60 charge that wasn't theirs but is the general practice now not to bother because it's unnecessary?) I'm not sure I've ever found an error.

April 19, 2023
10:22 am
Norman1
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You're not going to find many errors if you do check.

Asking for the receipt is a tell that you're likely one of those who do check their monthly statements. So, that opportunistic restaurant worker won't try adding an extra pen stroke to change your $31 charge slip to $34 or $37, for example, that some did years ago on those manual charge slips.

It is not as easy now with chip-and-PIN or tap transactions to scam. But, it is still possible. One friend found one strange "error" where the credit card charge was higher than the store sales slip total.

I suspect it was one of those merchants that did not have an integrated checkout system. Staff rings up the purchases into the cash register and then manually enters the total into the separate card terminal.

April 20, 2023
12:18 pm
rodeworthy
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Last weekend I made the decision to place the April GIC’s in my ‘Horizontal Ladder Plan' with a 1-yr GIC at Motive and a 2-yr at People’s bank. I waited until Monday to begin the money move to these institutions.

Early Monday morning I arranged a transfer from Achieva and another from Oaken to our hub account at CIBC. Both transfers were available in our CIBC account by Tuesday morning. CIBC does not put a hold on transfers to our account so on Tuesday I arranged to pull funds into Motive and People’s.

On Wednesday morning both Motive and People’s accounts showed the transfer amount credited but on hold. Our CIBC account did not record the transfer until overnight Wednesday.

This morning, Thursday, I called both Motive and People’s to see if I could get the holds lifted and proceed with the GIC purchases. At both institutions I was connected to a CSR within 3 minutes.

It was no problem to get the holds lifted and each GIC was negotiated during the phone call including some fine tuning to make them joint and payment at maturity to our savings accounts. I couldn’t have asked for any better service during this whole process.

There has been a lot of B&C about service from online institutions lately but I am extremely pleased about the service I received from Achieva, Oaken, CIBC, Motive and People’s during this process. I thought it would be useful to point out this out to counter some of the negative reports that have been prolific lately.

To be fair, I do not use online accounts for day-to-day services - for my purposes they are investment savings accounts. To this end, they serve me well and I appreciate the service I get.

April 20, 2023
1:06 pm
RetirEd
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Yeah, that print-the-receipt-and-discard-it method is bizarre. Most McDonalds' do it in my area. And when I ask for the receipt they print a new one!

I think, in their case, they use the receipt as the order slip. When the slip comes back with the order, they toss it. I always ask for a copy when paying now.

Over the the long term, I find bank errors rare these days EXCEPT when unusual requests are made, such as paying from my US dollar account instead of converting new funds. But I consistently find 3-5 credit card bill errors a year even now, probably most due to vendor screwu-ps.

RetirEd

"Trust, but verify!" -Ronald Ray-gun

RetirEd

April 22, 2023
6:02 am
Bill
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Those are wildly different experiences, RetirEd, you finding about 4 credit card errors every single year whereas I find none that I can recall over decades.

Maybe the difference lies in the fact that pretty well all of my (actually it's 99% my spouse's) purchases are at large, chain retailers, do you buy your stuff mainly at small, independent businesses?

April 22, 2023
9:31 pm
RetirEd
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Mostly big chains and restaurants.
RetirEd

RetirEd

April 23, 2023
4:12 am
Bill
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That's interesting, RetirEd, maybe it's those restaurant workers Norman1 referred to. Are the errors consistently one way, always in merchant's favour? Are they consistently small errors? We have maybe 10 - 20 fast-food chains or local pick-up pizza joint charges per month, no tips involved, can't recall an error.

That's still a lot to me, an error every few monthly statements months for you. I wonder if there are big differences depending on where one lives.

In any event I think I'm going to stop detailed monthly review of every charge, maybe just scan statement to make sure nothing obviously wrong & then throw out paper receipts.

April 23, 2023
6:54 am
cgouimet
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I manually enter every Checking/Savings/Credit transaction manually in Quicken Cash Manager. Overkill for some people here I suppose, but it's not that time consuming.

I then do a quick monthly statement review for those accounts.

The few errors I've encountered in balancing in the last 25 years were caused by operator fat fingers (me).

There were two exceptions. The first was when TNG launched their MasterCard. I signed up. Within 2 months I got a fraudulent charge from the UK. I hadn't been to the UK in the previous 3 years and I had used the card in local retail outlets only, never online. TNG cancelled the charge and the card and supplied a new card. A month later, same thing from the same outfit I had never of in the UK. Again, TNG cancelled the charge and I cancelled the card permanently ...

CGO
April 24, 2023
1:54 am
RetirEd
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Bill: After they stopped providing carbon or no-carbon copies, I carried around a little piece of carbon paper folded in my wallet and made sure to copy my signature from the Merchant Copy to my own. Some merchants would protest, but it served me well when my card was cloned twice, ten years apart. I pointed out I'd never used an unsigned receipt and those fakes were unsigned, and they accepted that as proof, not to mention that the fakes were always on-line purchases and I'd never made any.

Then came chip&PIN and we lost that surety. Mind you, one of my Amex cards is still signature-enabled; I requested it on renewal and they had a pile of unused blanks for that relatively rare card. The other type burned through its supply long ago and it's now chip&PIN.

I see errors both in my favour and the merchants'. Most of the errors are small, save the double-charges which can be substantial. Several of those have been at gift shops with hand-entered data. Reversing of digits is common. Last year I picked up the $250 bill at a Chinese restaurant, collecting everyone else's cash and making one charge. (Yes, they let me have their points.) The restaurant submitted the bill, but when the issuer returned it for verification they never sent it back. Two billing cycles later, with the charge still outstanding on my spreadsheet, I had to nag the restaurant manager three times to dig it out and resubmit it. All with a helpful manager who tried his best despite the language barrier - he was sure I was trying to get a refund. I eventually had to explain to his bookkeeper.

Could I have let it drop? I'd have felt awful, and if the problem had been found later I would have looked like a sleaze.

Like cgouimet, I enter charges at the end of each day and check the spreadsheet against the statement, drilling down if they don't agree. In any case, reviewing bills is good for one's awareness of spending.
RetirEd

RetirEd

April 27, 2023
6:06 pm
randy
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have had an acct with them for a few years and now they've decided to close it; not a good experience at all, zero stars!

April 28, 2023
6:40 am
Nehpets
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randy said
have had an acct with them for a few years and now they've decided to close it; not a good experience at all, zero stars!  

What reason was given for closing the account? Inactivity?

Stephen

April 30, 2023
6:55 pm
randy
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yes indeed

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