High Interest eSavings 5.5% for 3 months | RBC Royal Bank | Discussion forum

Went to open an online account for this promo only to learn that accounts can only be opened during business hours 0600-2100. Holy freaking crap. The whole point of online access is supposedly for the convenience of the consumer, not the stupid bank.

The really sad thing is that I am not all that surprised at the sh**** service level from RBC; it's just so prevalent throughout the financial industry that it is the de facto standard.

The big banks are all about shareholder value. Cutting costs/services and increasing fees. I will soon be closing my RBC accounts and banking solely with Tangerine. You can now do pretty much everything online. No more monthly account and other fees.

I opened up a new HISA, to take advantage of the 3-month promo for 5.5%, on Feb 2, and transferred funds into it.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that a new HISA had been added from a different branch. I was certain that I had not seen any HISA account on my profile, when I opened the first HISA on Feb 2. I had no recollection of opening a second HISA and was worried it might cause a problem with my existing promo. i.e. What if I simply missed noticing it and the second HISA was actually my first HISA and my funds were sitting in an account earning 1.7% interest instead of the higher 5.5% promo interest. I was pretty sure that I had not opened an additional account accidentally, but with so much money at risk, I had to be certain.

The RBC portal does not offer any details on when the account was opened or how much each account earns for interest. (Tangerine, for example, will show the interest rate for each account.) I walked into an RBC branch to investigate. They told me that the 2nd unknown account had been open since 2022-10. I was very confused. I had opened an RBC USD account in 2020, or so, but nothing in 2022. I told the branch manager that I was worried that I would not receive the bonus promo, if the 2nd HISA account was older than my new HISA, since that would make my 2nd HISA account into my first HISA account at RBC and thus disqualify me from the promo offer. She agreed that it seemed likely that I would be ineligible for the offer.

I pressed her for details on this mysterious 2nd HISA. I had tried to find the branch address from the transit number, but could not. She told me the address and I immediately recognized it as an HSBC location, because I had just filled out some forms with that address. We both came to the conclusion that it might be due to the migration of HSBC accounts to RBC, after their acquisition by RBC. (I had received e-mail warning about some HSBC changes.) She said that she would send e-mail to confirm the situation with her back-office. I asked that she send me a copy of the e-mail so that I would have written confirmation of rate, in case of any future problems.

I am currently awaiting their response and just thought I'd let any others know of what might be happening to their RBC and HSBC accounts.

Update: received written response from the branch manager confirming my +3.8% bonus offer for my new eHISA for three months. The standard rate of 1.7% for eHISA accounts may change, meanwhile.

mordko: What's a "fathom" account? Did your phone auto-mistake "phantom"?

This offer is a total scam from RBC, I opened an account and transferred funds and RBC didn't honour the same for me as the rep on the phone told me that I had an account previously that was closed several years ago and the offer is only valid if it is the 1st HISA in your entire life... Crazy, not even in the fine print. Lost 1 month interest cause of this non-sense from RBC.