It Pays to Monitor Your Bank Account

This is for those of you with student bank accounts. You may not be aware that every year you are required to provide the bank with information proving you are still a student. No one will tell you this. No one will remind you that you need to do this. Instead, they will simply switch your account over to whatever will make them a large amount in monthly fees.

It seems to me that it is downright sneaky just to automatically change the account type without consulting the customer, and that banks must lose customers when they exhibit behavior like this. Wouldn't it save them customers in the long run to simply phone or email or send a letter to the customer before changing the account over? Is this too much to ask? The especially annoying thing about the whole affair is that they could easily tell I'm still a student as I'm still paying tuition fees from my account to SFU; it's clearly marked on my bank statements.

Luckily, when I caught them taking exorbitant fees out of my account, I called them on it and got the money back. But I'm sure this does not happen to everyone, and I'm sure a lot of students lose a significant amount to bank fees they shouldn't be charged for in the first place.