Which bank accounts are best and why?

[Cocoon]

I was reading another post and didn't wanted to hijack so here it goes.

Which bank is the best bank and why? I have a basic account but they charge me for maintaining the account.

Now, this really annoys me as I keep my money in their account and I do not get any interest but I pay them even though I know that they are using my money.

I have never had to pay a maintenance fee or transfer fee or any fee really unless I want a special service etc. But for day to day banking no fees at all. I used to use my account to transfer money into my other accounts or pay my bills or pay someone either online or at the branch. I just found out that ING does not charge maintanence fee so I'm thinking of opening ING account and closing my current account.
I was wondering which bank you girls are banking with? And do you get anything plus like if you use their cards for shopping you will get points or bonus to use towards shopping or airmiles etc.

I asked hubby but he has no idea and he told me if I get PC card(we shop at Superstore) I have to keep certain amount in that account to be able to get points or something like that but I'm sure he is wrong

Thank you

[Inspired by Reggio]

I love PC ... you earn points every time you use the card and extra points for shopping PC stores or brands and you pay no fee unless you go into over draft or use special services like money orders and well all banks charge for those in addition to that $12-15 a month service charge just to bank with them

I have PC banking and PC MasterCard both earn me points.

Honestly I earn about $350 a year in free groceries with my PC account - how many banks pay you $350 to use their services????

[Cocoon]

Do they charge you for maintaining your account? What I need is to put my money there and use it whenever i want without any charges. My husband's bank charges him a fee if he takes money out and use his card to pay for shopping. How ridicilous is that?

[Crayola kiddies]

I have pc also and love it ... There is no fees and you collect points . If you just have a debit card you only collect points at pc stores ( loblaws, independent, no frills, superstores) if you have a mastercard as well you earn points on everything you put on your mastercard no matter the store. I have a savings and a checking acct . And I do all my banking online ( no choice it's virtual) so if I want to move money from my checking to my savings it's instant but if I want to move from my savings to my chequing I have to date it for the next day. I love that cause there's no impulse buying . You earn relatively good interest on the savings acct ... So I keep most of my money there . I would recommend pc I have never had one problem with them and they do EMT's fir your daycare payments

[Inspired by Reggio]

Nope NO FEES for general banking ... I can use my debit card unlimited - in fact I earn more points the more I use it. I get free cheques too and no limit on how many a month I write.

The only time you would pay a fee is if you did something 'extra' outside normal banking ... so if you use ANOTHER banks ATM than you'd pay $!.50 service charge but you can use CIBC machine as often as you like for FREE. If you want a money order you pay for that and so forth.

If you go into overdraft with your account - you pay $4.95 service charge for that plus interest on the $$$ you are below zero until you get it back into the plus amounts.

Now if you had an account and it sat DORMANT for more than 3 months or whatever their dormant criteria is - aka no money went in or out during that time - than they do charge a service charge for that???? Not sure the logic there to be honest as long as the account has money in it it should not cost them more for it to just SIT there? That is my one beef with them - but than again ALL banks have this policy from what I have heard and some banks if your account sits dormant they will not only charge a 'dormancy fee' but eventually they 'absorb' all the money in it and close the account - so when you notice you have to go and fight to get your 'abandoned' money back .... to me that is just so wrong

[Crayola kiddies]

I have never had to worry about my account going dormant ... Haha !!!! The last time I cashed in my points I bought a gas BBQ for hubby ... I got it at the end of the season when they went on sale and never had to pay one cent for it (350,00 points) now I'm saving up for a new LCD flat screen. I don't like using my points for food I want "something" that I can keep.

[mom-in-alberta]

We use PC Financial and Scotiabank. Used to use PC exclusively, but with having paper cheques from clients I wanted a branch that I could actually walk into and talk to someone. My only beef with PC is that no fees seems to equal no service. If you have any questions, issues or concerns you can only deal with it over the phone. In my experience, the people at the store kiosks are just sales reps. They always get me to just call PC in the end. I do looooove PC points....