The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Le Poisson on April 30, 2015, 09:16:58 AM
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Hopefully some other Canukistanians can help me out here.
We are testing the water at QSTD and just moved one $5010 TFSA over to see what its like. Outbound from RBC we got hit with a $50 fee on the transfer.
When I called RBC to ask about the fee (their website says no fees on funds transfers, and makes no mention of any other fees) they replied that the fees were outlined in the paperwork we signed when we opened the fund. I pointed out that the new fee structure is what has us looking at moving our mortgage, bank accounts RESP's etc. out, and we want to be treated differently. They replied that fees are fees and it sucks to be us.
Then they pointed out that if I wanted to move the TFSA back to them, they would cover any fees QSTD charged since that's how a good bank works. Basically hinting that I should go after QSTD to recover the charges from RBC.
While I'm venting a little here, I'm also wondering - has anyone here had luck with getting QSTD to cover fees incurred from moving out of RBC (or any bank)? How did that conversation go? Also - since all the first tier banks are going nuts with fees right now (on regular accounts) does anyone know if the credit agencies are going the same way? We have Duca and a few others near by, and since everything is online now - why not?
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Questrade has a well-known and well-documented policy (http://www.questrade.com/campaigns/free_to_transfer) of covering transfer-out fees if and only if the account is worth at least 25,000 CAD.
Given their stated policy, they will probably decline to cover the fee for your small account, but I bet you could negotiate something where if you transfer in another 20,000 CAD right away, they'd cover both fees. That's not a stated policy though. It's just my experience negotiating with broker-dealers. You will have to negotiate with them yourself and your results may vary.
As an aside, "QT" is not a good abbreviation for Questrade because there is another Canadian broker-dealer named QTrade, so the abbreviation is ambiguous.
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Thanks Cathy - I changed the shortform.
Now I feel like a sucker thinking i could win doing this. It also means that the Questrade account is at a $50 disadvantage since we wanted to do an apples-to-apples comparison for a while to see how the two accounts did against each other.
I'll do a funds transfer to make up the difference, but I'm still going to fight for my money at either end.
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Cathy is bang on here. Move another $20,000 to Questrade right away and give them a call. They will certainly cover the fees for you.
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Credential hit me with a >$100 fee when I moved over as well. It hasn't completed yet but I assume that Sunlife is also going to gouge me on the way out as my small amount gets transferred over from there.
In both cases I expect to make up the difference quite quickly by not paying the egregious management fees their walled gardens of funds were charging.