They have made lots of money off of my economic hard times!!! Open an Electric Orange checking account with ING - none of those bogus fees!!!!

A minmum balance fee for a checking account? It is enevitable in middle class homes that their balance will go below 100. It does not cost TD anything if your balance drops below this amount, so why the fee? What kind of problem does this solve in the company. Why penalize people for having financial hardship? Deceptive and greedy. Lower than low.

Well, where do I start?

A little background info. MY husband and I have been TD Banknorth customers for about 4 years now. I have a personal (was called simply free) checking and savings, as does he. We then have a joint checking and savings account. Makes life easier and we both have our own "play" money and money to pay our independant credit card bills.

In April of 2009 I recieved a letter from TD Banknorth stating changes they were making, mainly about new fees...yippe! After reading through the fairly long letter, I was not worried. The only fees that would effect me were a monthly maitenence fee on my checking account, and that was only is my average daily balance was below $100. No biggy. I rarely fall below that amount, and if I do it's only for a few days at the end of the month.

So just today I check my balance online and there is a $15 dollar fee. My balance before the fee was $78. I spent a little extra money given the holiday weekend traveling. So I call customer service to see what the fee was for. Surely enough it was an account maitenence fee for falling below $100 daily balance. He customer service rep told me that letters were sent out to all TD Banknorth customers well in advance. I told him that I recieved that letter and read it thoroughly and noticed that it was an average daily balance. He then told me that no, it was if at any point in the month I fall below $100 that I would be charged the fee. That did not seem right to me, but whatever. Then I went into the fact that we have several different accounts with them and our savings has several thousands dollars in it, and didn't that count for anything. He then told me that I could transfer the money over from the savings to my checking to avoid the fee next month. I asked him what the point of a savings account was for if I had to keep transferring money to avoid a fee, when I still had money in my checking? He didn't have a response. I then asked him why the banks are kicking the middle man while he is down...it is already hard enough in this economy to make ends meet and now they want to charge those of use who can't hold a balance every day of the month above $100??? His response was that this is what the banking industry is doing now and there is not one bank out there that has a free checking account. I think told him that the banking industry needs to reevalute their industry and that I will be switching to a Credit Union where there are NO FEES. He wished me good luck, and that was that.

I still can't understand the logic behind this whole thing. They are making money of my husband and I with our savings account just sitting there (barely making any interest) and they they go and charge me a fee...Think of all the money they are making right now off all these poor people who can barely pay their bills every month. Stupid...just stupid.

So I highly suggest to any TD banknorth members to switch to a Credit Union ASAP before they get too much mroe of your money. Ridiculous, just ridiculous!

They're a decent bank, and the lack of a fee is fine, but they have very high overdraft fees and their branches in Southern New England are pretty terrible. They have an online account manager that's nice...