RBC says new fees ‘cost of doing business’
Banking fees are going up at all of Canada’s five big banks, but some customers of RBC in particular are outraged about the changes. They’re accusing Canada’s biggest bank of targeting children and those who can least afford it.
Gordon and Elaine Murray from Glen Margaret, N.S., have been RBC customers for 20 years. It took one envelope in the mail the other day to get them thinking about changing.
Inside that envelope, Elaine Murray found the flyer Royal Bank of Canada recently mailed to many of its 16
million clients outlining the fee changes on the way.
“I couldn’t believe it — it just seemed outrageous,” she says.
Fee hikes June 1
On June 1, RBC is introducing new or higher fees for a variety of accounts and transactions including debit purchases, mortgage and loan payments and children’s accounts.
The bank is also increasing the age eligibility for seniors’ rebates from 60 to 65.
Elaine Murray and her husband have several accounts, insurance and a mortgage with RBC. The first thing they noticed is the new fee being added to mortgage payments, on top of the interest already being charged.
‘Double-dipping’
“It looked like double-dipping when I saw that we could be paying on top of our interest a fee for making our mortgage payments,” Gordon Murray says.
The fee increases may only be a dollar here and there, but he says any additional money being taken from customers is too much, especially from a bank that just announced a record $2.46-billion profit.
“You have a multinational corporation that makes billions of dollars … come to its clients and say, ‘and we want more,'” Murray says.
The couple say they are less worried about themselves and more troubled by the fees being added to children’s accounts and student loans.
“They were reaching into the pockets of young savers and students — it is just wrong,” Gordon Murray says.
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