Among the many things I enjoy in life, opening up bank accounts takes a spot pretty close to the top. Huh? you say. Just what kind of sicko are you?

Well, okay, it’s not really that I enjoy opening up the accounts. It’s not really that I even enjoy having the accounts. It’s not that I even use the accounts.

It’s just that I like grabbing up account opening bonuses.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out iBankBonus, a site that maintains a large list of banks across the US which offer sizable monetary bonuses for opening up accounts. The bonuses range anywhere from $25 to $200, and to get them you’ll have to fulfill a certain list of requirements, generally including monthly direct deposit.

The thing is, sometimes the banks get really tricky with the requirements. Sometimes there are obscure terms and conditions in tiny print on page 37 of some document you signed and if you’re not aware of these details you can end up having to pay a bunch of fees or you can end up not getting your bonus. And sometimes, the banks play dirty.

I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you several cautionary tales about the lengths banks will go to to not pay out these bonuses. I’ll also tell you about where I screwed up. If you decide to play the bank bonus game, I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes!

Bummed Out by BOA

This happened a few years ago when I was still a student. Bank of America was offering a $75 bonus for opening a checking account with a $100 opening deposit and monthly direct deposit.

I made it very clear at the branch what I was doing (that is, that I was looking to get the $75 bonus, and that this was basically the only reason I was opening the account, but that I might continue to use it if I was pleased with it) and the lady who helped me open the account was very good-natured and thought this was a creative way to make money. She helped me open up a student account. Because I had waited until 4:30 PM on the exact day the promotion was set to expire and didn’t have enough cash on me to make the opening deposit, I went to the ATM and used my credit card to get a cash advance of $100. (Note: it is generally a very bad idea to do this. In this case, I paid the credit card off by phone the very next day to avoid paying gobs of interest.)

A little while later, the bonus still hadn’t come through. I called in to ask why and was told that student accounts weren’t eligible for the bonus. Well, dangit! Why didn’t you tell me that when I opened up my student account?!

I dug out the original terms and conditions for the promotion and sure enough it said right there in very small print that student accounts were not eligible to receive the $75. What a bummer!

Hey, Citibank - you still owe me $200!

One of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had with any bank occurred when I tried to milk Citibank for a $200 bonus. The terms looked very simple: open up a checking account and a savings account. Make a large opening deposit. Set up direct deposit. You’d get $100 for making the opening deposit, and after 90 days, Citibank would give you the other $100 for maintaining monthly direct deposits throughout that period.

I opened my account over the phone. I waited for the related materials to arrive in the mail. They didn’t come, so I called back. My address had been mangled by the rep, so I gave it again. I was told that after my materials arrived, I’d have to go in to a Citibank branch to verify my identity.

The materials arrived, and I went to the branch and showed some ID. A very nice man took down all my info and faxed it over to Citi HQ.

I called customer service again to make sure I was all set up to receive the $200. It turned out that somehow the promotion code for the bonus hadn’t been applied to my account, so I had the representative apply it again. I was told that I was back on track to get the $200.

Right around the time the first direct deposit hit my account, I received a phone call from Citibank informing me that the account was being closed. “But why?!” I cried. Citibank had been unable to verify my identity. “But I watched the guy at the branch fax all that stuff in to you!” I protested. Tough luck; they hadn’t received it. They’d already spoken to me about this on the phone, they claimed - but the conversation supposedly happened on a day when I was on an airplane all morning and afternoon, and you can’t get phone reception at 30,000 feet! “What’s gonna happen to my opening deposit, and what about the direct deposit that just hit my account?” I asked. The funds would be mailed to me in the form of a paper check which would take a week to reach me.

We’re talking about thousands of dollars that were tied up. I’m just thankful that at that point, I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck anymore (at one point, I was), so I was still able to buy groceries and pay rent.

I received the paper check within a few days, so that was nice. I assumed I’d still be receiving at least the first $100 of the bonus, which again was supposed to be credited based on the opening deposit I’d made, but that amount hadn’t been added on to the check that was mailed to me.

I called customer service to ask what was up. They more or less wouldn’t give me the time of day, so I worked my way up the chain of command until there was nobody else to whom the buck could be passed and I received Citibank’s final, official, answer: I wouldn’t be receiving the bonus because my account had never been opened!

I really have to applaud the creativity of this line of thinking. Somebody had to be really smart to come up with that. The only thing Citibank couldn’t explain is how one could make a deposit into an account that hadn’t been opened, and how an account that hadn’t been “opened” could be “closed!”

Bummed Out by BOA - Again!

I guess I didn’t learn my lesson the first time I tried to wrangle an account opening bonus from BOA because more recently I tried it again. This time I knew a thing or two about this game, I figured: I would refrain from opening a student account (I graduated a few years ago anyway), and I would open the account online to avoid any confusion about my address and about any promotion codes that needed to be applied.

I didn’t receive any materials by mail, so I called in to ask what was going on. It turned out that those materials had been mailed to my old address - the one that was on file from when I attempted to do the $75 promotion and was denied. I had definitely not entered that address into the online application. I had the representative fix my address.

The unfortunate part is that by the time I had the representative fix my address, the promotion had already expired, and BOA refused to honor it. I won’t go so far as to claim that they mailed the materials to the wrong address on purpose, but there shouldn’t have been any confusion about the info I entered into the application, so this mistake was at the very least a sign of sloppiness on BOA’s part.

So that’s the story of how I didn’t get the second BOA bonus, either. Dagnabbit!

The Moral of the Story

I know that some people out there probably think that I deserved to get screwed in the above instances for trying to play the system. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to make a little extra cash from legitimate, legal bonuses offered by the banks, and I also don’t have any problem with banks enforcing their terms and conditions (though when they play dirty, that’s something else entirely).

Banks make offers such as these to bring in long-term customers. If they pay out $200 to somebody and that somebody subsequently chooses to use that bank exclusively for decades, the $200 was a smart investment. The banks also know that many people will not read the fine print and will screw up and that they won’t have to pay out a lot of these bonuses. It is my personal impression that some less honest banks also deny bonuses they have, in actuality, obligated themselves to pay.

The larger point that I’m trying to get across by posting all this stuff is that life these days is all about complications like these. Whether or not you choose to play the bank bonus game, it is always an excellent idea to read the terms and conditions. When you apply for a credit card or a mortgage or a lease or whatever, know what you’re signing up for. Know what you’ll be penalized for. Understand the full effects of every action you choose to take. That’s what financial responsibility is all about!

I hope you enjoyed these stories. If you’re interested in hunting down some bank bonuses for yourself, you should expect about half of your efforts to fail for one reason or another. Banks are pretty smart, and sometimes, they’re nasty.

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