As part of our New Year’s reorganization, I’ve been closing extraneous accounts that we’re no longer using. One of these is our old FNBO Direct savings account, which has been sitting dormant with a dollar plus a few cents of interest for the past year.
This is one of several online savings accounts that I opened back when banks were actually competing with each other for business. Nowadays, it almost seems like they’re trying to drive customers away with repeated rate cuts.
Anyway… I logged in and sent a quick message to Customer Service inquiring about how to close my account. The next day, I received the following message:
Thank you for contacting FNBO Direct. To request the closure of your account, please follow the steps below:
1. From the bottom of any page, select the ‘Contact Us’ link.
2. Select ‘Account Closing Request’ from the options on the left side of the page.
3. Fill out the form accordingly and click ‘Submit’.Please keep in mind you may keep your Online Savings Account open with a zero balance. If you decide at a later time to have an open account with us, you would need to fill out a new application.
If you have any additional questions, please visit our FAQ’s at www.fnbodirect.com or send us an email.
Sounds easy enough, but I hit a small snag…
Before closing our account, I wanted to transfer the small amount of remaining money out, but guess what? FNBO Direct doesn’t let you transfer less than $10 online. Seems like a weird policy, but it is what it is.
So… Instead of transferring a dollar something out of our account, I had to request a check during the account closing process. I did this all about a week ago, and I received the check Friday. Now that our account is closed, I can free up whatever small amount of brain power that I was using to keep track of this account.
As an aside, I’m not really interested in keeping extraneous accounts open even if I can do so with a zero balance. Not only do I not want to keep track of this stuff, but the existence of extra accounts also represents a small security risk – especially if they’re still linked up to active bank accounts.
A word of warning…
I’m not sure how FNBO Direct handles this, but I know that some banks will keep any unpaid interest if you close your account mid-month. Thus, it’s probably safest to wait until your current interest posts before closing your account. If you’d like to get your hands on your balance sooner, transfer it out but leave the account open until the accrued interest gets paid out.
Note: While writing this up, I noticed that my pal Jim is hosting Spring Cleaning Week over on his site, so be sure to check it out if you’re interested in freshening up your finances.
As an alternative to having to deposit a check for a dollar, you could transfer $10 into the account and then the full balance back out via ACH (waiting until the interest is paid).
FNBO will mail you the check for the interest. I transferred all my money out before closing the account and they sent me a check for $0.02 a few weeks later.
What a funny story! My wife had something similar happen to her, she ended up with a check from ETrade for $0.01. She ended up having a quirky exchange with the bank teller for the check. I’m sure it cost all parties involved significantly more than $0.01 (wife in gas/time, bank in teller cost/transaction cost and etrade in transaction/postage/etc).