I haven’t posted a bank promo in a while, but this one isn’t too shabby. Dime Savings Bank is offering up to $300 in bonuses for their Prime Dime Rewards Checking. You can get:
- $100 for account opening, bonus paid immediately
- $100 for setting up a monthly recurring direct deposit
- $100 for completing two Online bill payments
Minimum opening balance is just $1, but there is a $15 monthly maintenance fee if average daily balance is under $5,000. Takes 6 months to get direct deposit and billpay bonuses. Expires 11/15/09. Selected fine print:
*Bonuses for Prime Dime Rewards Checking are $100 for account opening, $100 for setting up a monthly recurring direct deposit, and $100 for completing two Online bill payments. The bonus for account opening will be paid at the time of account opening. The additional two bonuses will be paid 6 months after the opening date if the direct deposit service is established and the bill payments are completed within 3 months of account opening. There are neither account minimum balance nor balance time requirements to obtain the bonuses. If you close your account within 6 months of the opening date, any bonuses paid will be deducted at the time of account closing. Bonuses will be paid for new checking customers only. Bonus accounts are limited to one per household. Promotion is in effect until 11/15/09. All bonus payments will be reported as interest on IRS Form 1099-INT.
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Initial deposit minimum is $500, unfortunately.
Despite the fine print, the minimum deposit enforced by the system is actually $500- fyi
$15 monthly fee is $180, so what it is the real advantage of opening an account? Or is it what a US bank account usually charges?
Not true Justin. They want you to open the account with more, but I walked right in an opened my account with $40 and that was it. 🙂
@prisqua: $15*6 months required to be open = $90
@sandy: Ah, unfortunately I can’t walk into a branch, though. Not a big deal…I’ll just withdraw it after it posts.
Ok, let’s see here. 6 months of cost is $90. I only get the other $200 if I do both requirements of bill pay and direct deposit. So if I don’t, I lose everything if I withdraw earlier than 6 months. Knowing their rules, I probably get charged a 7th month quitting on the first day after 6 months, so absent the other bonuses I would be at a -$5. Plus I pay taxes on the $100 received, which comes out to about 21 or 28%, considering which tax bracket, so I end up losing close to another $30 at tax time.
Bottom line, I lose money unless I do all three bonuses. If I do all three, then I probably end up with a net of $150 or so, figuring in taxes.
If you can keep $5k in there, you’ll only be losing about 1% since I think they pay 0.50% APY (if compared to a 1.50% APY online savings account). That’s losing about $4 in pre-tax interest per month.
There is an alternate promotion for another account (Dime Rewards Checking) that gives you $75 x 3 but only requires $2,500 balance to avoid fees. It does not pay interest.
Many employers let you divide your monthly direct deposit among several bank accounts. If there’s no such thing as a minimum direct deposit for these offers, one could merely have $15 or so sent to this account to satisfy the direct deposit requirement and have the balance deposited in a more permanent account. Check with your HR dept.
@TL: Then don’t do it, if you don’t like it. But I don’t see why you feel the need to whine about it/discourage others from doing it.
@Ben: Yes, that’s my plan. I’ve done this with a couple other places and none of them has had a minimum requirement- I put in $20/month just so it looks (maybe?) fairly legitimate, but I think technically any amount would be acceptable.
Guys, will an ACH push qualify as a direct deposit ?
Looks like this can be opened online. Anyone try to open an account–if so what was your experience?
Ben/Justin,
Been using the same system with my employer, and have had no issues using $1.00 as the DD amount.
I transferred money from one bank to another bank and the receiving bank statement indicated as “direct deposit from ABC bank” Does this qualify as a direct deposit?
if from payroll, it will say “direct deposit from ABC company”
is it ok to open many accounts in order to get bonus and close it after 6 month?
I just looked over their website, and I do not see this promotion anywhere. Is it possible they ended the promo early (we’re still more than a month away from 11/15/09) or am I missing something?
As to the “does an ACH push count as direct deposit”, I’ve asked this Q of another bank for the same purpose, and the answer is: no. Direct deposits “look” different to the banks, so you can’t fake ’em with an ACH push from another of your own bank accounts. Sorry! Great minds think alike, though.
The promotion is still going on: http://www.dimewill.com/, but its hard to read the fineprint there. Its a terrible crummy image.
They had the ad published on some local newspapers (New York) in mid September.
I figure the 3 x $100 bonuses and 0.5% interest in this offer to be a 12.19% annualized pre-tax rate of return (APR) with a $5000 deposit (I didn’t account for any direct deposit in the cash flows, since you probably could get away with a $1 deposit as mentioned earlier, and we’ll assume those are offset by the bill payments you make for that bonus).
To compare with the return with a smaller deposit of $2500: If depositing only $2500 and keeping another $2500 in an online rewards checking account earning 3.95%, the 3 x $75 bonuses with no interest combined with the interest in the rewards checking account comes to a 10.75% annualized pre-tax return.
I think both look like good offers to keep some cash for 6 months, so long as you meet all the bonus requirements.
I applied but balked at funding the account electronically when instructed to contact them by email after the trial deposits were made, which seems very half-assed. I’m also hesitant to fund by check because they didn’t provide any sort of account number or application number to identify the account. I’m just supposed to mail a check for $5,000 and hope they deposit it into the right account? Not. So I went to their website and used the contact form to express my concerns; I push the button and get an error page: “Bad character.” That’s enough to convince me to avoid these clowns.