A few years ago, I responded to their ad about a CD. I think they stated that they had many banks to deal with. But at the appointment, he only had one, and he said I didn’t qualify since I already had a bank account with that bank, Bank of Internet.
Last week, I responded to another of their high interest (4.8%) CD ads and scheduled an appointment with Michael McMahon. But when I saw some very negative reviews on the internet, including that their advertised rates are only on $15,000, I called him back. He stated that this interest rate was not limited to $15,000, because they deal with thousands of banks. (Their ad states $15,000 as the minimum.)
When I went in, he reiterated thousands of banks but immediately started talking about an annuity. I love annuities but sell them to myself, so I switched back to the CD. I turns out that of the thousands of banks, there’s only one that the ad applies to, and that happens to be the same bank from a few years ago, namely Bank of Internet (recently changed its name to Axos Bank), with whom I no longer have an account.
But the maximum deposit is $15,000! So their “over 6,000” banks comes down to one, and their minimum $15,000 turns out to be a maximum of $15,000. Total waste of my time!
Walt
San diego,#2Author of original report
Thu, August 08, 2019
I'm not sure there is really a point to rebut their rebuttal, since their rebuttal basically says NOTHING. I'll just restate that their "thousands of banks" is evidently one, and their advertised "$15,000 minimum", by whatever language they speak, really means maximum.
Jeff
sun city,#3REBUTTAL Owner of company
Thu, August 08, 2019
Sorry to hear you had an unfavorable experience, we would be happy to help you in any way we can. We look at banks for the highest rates and sound financials. There are thousands of banks, and when a client comes in we show them the highest rate we have at that time. We do not show all the bank rates, we show the best or highest.
When client comes back in, if we are using the same bank, we will offer an attractive rate to stay in the account, but usually not advertised rate. We and the bank want our customers coming back. The banks objective is to gather customers, we don’t tell them “they don’t qualify anymore or they can’t make a deposit.”
Several banks have different minimums and maximums, but we can guarantee a $15,000 deposit as our Ad states. The Customer was shown the highest bank rate we had the day he came in to the office, which was the advertised rate. Sometimes we find higher rates than advertised, maybe with a different or same term and we offer these rates to our customers when they come in.