Guanghu Cui was poring over his TD Bank statements in March, preparing to pay taxes for his small immigration consulting firm in Oakville, Ont., when he noticed a $1.50 fee for sending an e-transfer.
It was surprising, because when he’d opened his business account three years ago, his financial adviser told him the plan included five free transactions a month and he’d never exceeded that number.
Cui complained and eventually TD said it would reimburse him for the fees and compensate him for his “frustration and inconvenience.”
But when the paperwork arrived for Cui to sign, it included a condition saying he must “keep it confidential.” While he could speak about the dispute, he would not be allowed to tell anyone that TD had offered compensation.
Cui emailed TD to say he wouldn’t take the offer if the bank didn’t drop the gag order.
“I was told the offer is final and there’s no room for negotiation… take it or leave it,” said Cui. “That is just unfair. And that is unethical.”
“There’s no room for negotiation” is an odd thing to say to someone when you’ve indicated that you do not want certain information to be public.
“We dictate from a position of monolithic strength. Also, here’s a pickaxe.”
I wouldn’t sign it either. a buck 50. rather sing your sins from the mountains now that you pissed me off. of course if they just refunded it and kept quite I would be unlikely to mention it except maybe casually.
These clowns really disrespect this Chad… Why would sign something like this off for 50 bucks haha
I would rather take it to the court of public opinion so people know what we are dealing here with. Document it so down the road if there litigation … They can get fucked with a search query haha
Sue them in small claims court. It’s $1.50, will cost them hours of their time if they don’t default, the judge will just love seeing that NDA, and you will get your small financial victory with a greater moral victory. Then you take it to the press again so everyone gets reminded to check their bank statements and maybe do it dozens more times.
wait 50. I thought they were just reimbursing him. I might have just taken the 50 to be honest.
The story could be “I talked to TD and they fixed my issue. Great customer service!”
But they tried to buy him off for some reason…?
I had TD pit overdraft protection on my account without my consent (or coerced/implied consent) and I was livid. I went to the bank and demanded they take it off and they did immediately. They refunded the charges and gave me 2 months free of the service charge. Still mad about the asshole on the phone but the tellers are great at my bank.
Never ever TD, years ago I bought stocks of a company, through TD system, stocks were in Deposit/Withdrawal at Custodian (DWAC) and it took TD 1 month to find them and transfer them to my account, I needed to threaten them and went up to the ombusdman, I let dozens of messages, never ever they called me, only the dreaded email “we will ask for a transfer”. At one time I received an email with a phone number and “call me”, it was finally someone at TD who knew what it was and fixed the problem in 24h. Incredible. Never ever do trading with them.
I had the same experience with Citibank in 2001. I began saying “good morning, Michael. You’re the 22nd person I’ve spoken to in my attempts to get this resolved.”. They expressed incredulity, and that let me highlight the experience so far with names and comments. Nothing came of their sympathy, I’m sure.
Finally, after 29 people and me quoting chapter and verse of their obligations while they searched for money they misplaced - a sizable sum for me at the time - they did their bare responsibility and I had funds to use.
Sooo never doing business again with those guys.
TD has screwed me enough times to leave for another bank; Considering everything I had was with Canada Trust, that was no small feat… but a consistent and ongoing problem of:
- Told them I was traveling, please don’t lock the cards; cards locked for fraud protection on day 1 and we cant check into hotel. Spent the night in a bar that accepted the backup cash.
- Inheritance cheque was “Lost” and took 2 years to recover the money. Thank fuck for taking a photo of it on arrival.
- Account hacked- brokerage account. No way anyone could just randomly get into it or have conned us; we check it once a year at best. took almost the entire account in 499 increments until it was dry. Took a year took a year and police investigation to get that money back.
- Ongoing small fees and interest that should not be there trying to get snuck past on statements.
Finally left after almost loosing a hundred grand.
No one who values their money should ever do business with that bank. They cant even do the one thing a bank is there to do.
I use TD for my paycheck and have for like 20 years. I’m switching as soon as I can. Over the last few years my services have been cut to almost nothing, when I bring it up at the branch they tell me to call it in, when I call it in they tell me to go to the branch. I can’t even photo deposit my checks and nobody cares to fix this. They’ve also become a lot more nosy. I’ve been working for the same company for 20 years and tellers still inspect the check for 10 minutes, ask me nosy questions about what I do for a living, and keep telling me there’s an error on my file which they fix, and the error just returns the next time I’m in.
TD is an absolute dumpster fire and they are beyond giving a fuck if you like it or not
I switched to a credit union about 10 years ago and haven’t looked back. I’ve personally had to deal with a few more human errors than at the commercial banks, but they’re fixed promptly (and permanently, an an issue-by-issue basis, at least), but I’ve encountered none of the systemic anti-customer issues that the commercial banks have thrown at me and my friends and family over the years.
It’s been good. Highly recommend.
