I just took care of opening one of these today. I went to a local branch and surprisingly they didn't know about this offer! I had an offer code and explained what it entailed and eventually the banker found it and got it set up. But.......there is an $11/mo fee on the checking account unless you...yada yada....and the simplest option is to have an average daily balance of $1500. So I'll transfer another $1000 over there for 60 days. I'll lose $2.83 on the interest at Discoverbank (1.7%) and save myself $22 in bank fees.
The other options were reducing the fee to $8/mo with a direct deposit over $500/mo or no fee if you open their credit card and spend $500/mo and a few others that didn't apply to us (military/student/mortgage/business acct). All in all, it was easy enough and this is one of the better promos.
The offer is not limited to one per household so DH is going to go and get the same offer in the next few days. I told him if he wants to jump through the hoops he can keep the money for himself and that means he uses it for ebay and thrift stores. OH BOY!
This was the 60 day $250 bonus promotion at Fifth/Third Bank.
I just passed the 60 days and my $250 bonus was posted so I went to the branch today to close the account. The teller says to me, "If you can keep this open another 30 days, that would be great because closing it before 90 days negatively impacts the banker." Now, I don't know if he means the actual person who opened my account is impacted or that the branch is impacted but that is not my problem. I almost said, "Not my circus, not my monkey" which is a phase I learned right here at ER.org, but I didn't want to get snarky so I just said, "I'm closing the account".
So then I had to sit with the banker who opened this 2 months ago and she tried to get me to keep it open, "Our Money Market rate.....don't you need a local bank that you can walk into......keep the relationship for when you need a loan....blah, blah. I have a local bank with NO FEES and I get much better interest on savings at an online bank. I'll just close this.
She didn't talk about how she'd be negatively impacted and she gave it to me in cash and I was out the door. If they need you to keep it open 90 days they should have made it a 90 day promo!
Nice deal, a few hoops to jump through but $250 is a great bonus. DH did the same deal and his bonus should post tomorrow and then he will also go close his account.