TD Strikes Again: Fees Even They Can’t Explain

In my last post about my experiences with TD just days ago, I was simply trying to be able to spend my own business’ money again. Fortunately, I managed to get that resolved. Their claim is that when you have a two-to-sign policy on an account you cannot have access to an EasyWeb account with the ability to spend anything, including your taxes. Small businesses take note! For all transactions both signatories need to be physically present at the bank. Somehow, they allowed us to work that way for years, but when they renewed our cards they decided to revoke our full online access without telling us. Neat! Ultimately, we had to solve it by both going to the bank and removing the two-to-sign policy altogether.

Now that I have access to my account again, I look at the transaction history and see two charges of $1.50 with the description: “CHQ-Image Fee” on the 1st of the month. I write to them via secure messaging and they respond with the following:

TD’s First Reply via Secure Messaging

Thank you for taking the time to review your TD Basic Business Plan account and noticing this fee. I can certainly understand how confusing unexpected fees can be, considering you have not used any cheques for the month of August. I happy to help provide clarification regarding the Cheque Image Return service and fees.

The Cheque Return Fee (CRF) for $2.00 monthly is one of our convenient record keeping options which forwards printed digital images of the front of all cheques you have written during the month with your monthly statement. This fee is charged monthly, regardless of cheques are issued from the accounts.

If you feel the service is not required, it will need to be cancelled by changing your record keeping options, this can be done online, over the phone or in branch.

If you would like to remove this service, I would recommend you change your record keeping options on your EasyWeb to online statements. Via EasyWeb within Profile & Settings -> Notifications & Alerts -> Delivery Preferences.

**Please make sure you select the online only option NOT the online option with cheque return.**

**Please note that until you change your record keeping options, you will still incur the cheque return fee.

Note that I bolded the most relevant part above for emphasis

Now, notice two thing. First, the fee name they provide isn’t even the one on my account. Second, the fee on my account was for the amount of $1.50, charged twice, but they are talking about a $2 fee. Regardless, I look into the menu options they described, and, sure enough it doesn’t even exist. Naturally, I write this to them as a response and this is what they came back with:

Secure Online Messaging: Take Two

I can confirm that when an account type is changed, the statement delivery preferences does change and default to the option that offers all the services in one. That said, we are able to request copy of the cheque that is not recognized, however, we mail a copy to your address which may between 7 to 10 business days. This services offers instant access to all cheques written throughout the month.

I tell them I have no use for this service so I would like to stop paying the fees. Because the menu options they told me to use don’t exist, I asked them to cancel it. Here’s what they responded with:

Third Times A Charm? (Spoiler: Nope)

It appears that you are looking to change your statement delivery preferences for your small business chequing account. I believe there is some miscommunication, and I do apologize. To change your statement delivery preference off “Cheque Return” and not get charged $2.00. You’ll need to call TD Small Business, as the change is not available through EasyWeb.

Seriously? So, wanting to just get this silly item off my to-do list, I give them a call. What do they tell me? It’s not a monthly fee at all! Rather, they charge this fee whenever someone views a cheque. They explained that with our previous account type, they were waiving the fee. They told me very clearly before switching my account that the only difference is the number of transactions we could make. Argh!!

Told To Call Them, Once Again

Anyhow, I tell the support agent that I’m the only person actively using our account today and haven’t viewed any cheques because I write them all myself anyway and have no reason to go look at the cheques I wrote. As you can see in the written communication above, the agent actually said: “I can certainly understand how confusing unexpected fees can be, considering you have not used any cheques for the month of August”. The agent told me one of us must have looked at the cheques. I assured him we did not and asked when we accessed it. He asked me to hold. He came back and said he did not know and to let them know if we see the charges again. I reiterated that we never viewed the cheques, but he said there was nothing else he could do.

So, ultimately, what are we paying for? Who knows. We sure don’t and apparently neither does TD.

TL;DR

Here is a summary of all the things that went wrong:

1. We wanted to save on fees. TD told us we could downgrade to a basic account and the only difference is the number of free transactions. Once downgraded, we started getting random cheque-viewing fees. These fees cost more than half the new monthly account fee!
2. They misread what the charges are. Both the amounts they charged and the description
3. They led me to a menu to change an option that doesn’t exist
4. Once again, the online support agent tells me they are powerless to help me and I need to call them
5. Just like last time, the agent on the phone gave me very different information than the online agents
6. Phone agent claims we access cheques that we didn’t. The online agent even wrote that we didn’t even use any! The phone agent couldn’t find any evidence that we accessed it, but kept the charges anyway

Save Us De-Fi!

Decentralized banking can’t come soon enough!