Well Done to ASB
Filed under: Banks, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
It’s really nice to be able to say that a Bank has done something really worthwhile but I think ASB deserve a gold star for doing just a little more to help people in Christchurch, and show a bit of team spirit and flexibility.
We realise that some ASB customers have been significantly affected by the Christchurch earthquakes so we have updated our assistance package to reflect this. If your home is uninhabitable or your income has been significantly impacted talk to us as you may be eligible for the following discounted rates on your existing products:
Home Loans
Save on your home loan rates for up to 12 months
We’re offering up to 12 months at a reduced rate to help make things easier. That means 0.5% discount off your existing fixed rate; and/or 1% discount off your floating rate.
Up to 6 months payment holiday on a home loan
Take a break from repayments (although interest will be added to your loan during this period increasing what you owe).
No Early Repayment Fees if you repay a fixed rate home loan, where a home is destroyed or suffered major damage as a result of the earthquake.
No establishment or adjustment fees if you need to establish or restructure a home loan as a result of the earthquake.
Credit Cards
A discounted rate of 6.24%p.a. on your ASB Credit Card for 12 months. This rate is subject to change.
Immediate consideration of any requests for emergency credit limit increases and review of credit card instalment repayments
Personal Loans
Up to six months payment holiday and a discounted interest rate for existing Personal Loans for 12 months. This is set at the current housing variable rate.
Term Investments
Access to funds in ASB Term Deposit or ASB Term Fund accounts without receiving a reduced return on your ASB Term Deposit or paying any ASB Term Fund withdrawal fees.
Insurance
Our support if you’re working with IAG on claims over and above the Earthquake Commission cover.
All Christchurch customers are also eligible for a 90-day emergency overdraft facility
Borrow up to $10,000 if you have a home loan (or $2,000 if not) at a special variable rate of 1.25% p.a. below ASB’s housing variable rate. Right now that special rate is 4.5% p.a.
These discounts are actually quite significant. To help put that in context, I recently had to negotiate damn hard to get a 0.1% discount of my floating rate mortgages, and my fixed rate (only one of those with ASB) is still fixed with no discount.
And the no early repayment fee can literally save tens of thousands of dollars.
ASB have similar offers in place for businesses affected by the Quake, and this is in addition to the emergency package that they set up, along with the other banks, immediately after the quake:
ASB Christchurch Business Rebuild Fund
We’ve set up a $100 million fund for ASB SME business customers with existing loans that have been substantially impacted by the earthquake.
The fund will offer a 12 month interest free period, followed by a discount of 1.00% off your rate(s) (fixed or floating) at that time for up to two years.
Principal repayments are not required during the first 12 months.
The offer is available until 31 August 2011.
To ask about any of these options, or just chat about your situation and how we can help, please call us on 0800 272 222 between 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
Lending criteria applies. Interest rates subject to change. ASB terms and conditions apply.
ASB Christchurch New Business Fund
We’ve set up a $100 million fund to encourage new business in the Christchurch region.
This fund is available for both existing small to medium business customers and new businesses whose future cash flows are expected to be financially viable within 12-24 months.
A maximum amount of $1 million business lending per customer.
The fund will offer a 12 month interest free period, followed by two years at 1.00% discount on customer rate for two year fixed rate and variable rate Term Loans and Overdrafts.
Principal repayments are not required during the first 12 months.
The offer is available until 31 March 2012.
I mean – Interest free loans for up to a year? I cannot tell you how mindblowing this is in New Zealand. This is not a place that ever took up the idea of 0% on credit card transfers (though ANZ are offering 2.99% at the moment).
Im really impressed – and let’s be honest here – it takes and awful lot for me to impressed with a bank. I am assuming that the other banks will follow their lead – but ASB got there first, and they get the credit.
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AirNewZealand joins the ranks ripping us off on CC charges.
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Getting to New Zealand, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
Hat tip to KiwiBlog and Lance Wiggs.
From the 15th December, Air New Zealand are going to add on another extra charge to your flight.
A Credit Card Fee.
- $2 for domestic New Zealand fares
- $5 for short haul Tasman and Pacific Island fares
- $10 for long haul fares
Even worse – if thats possible, they are going to charge you per one way leg, even though it is only 1 single Credit Card transaction. How the hell they justify that I have no idea. Probably some bullshit about how they are charging flat fees rather than a % which works out cheaper for us so they are being nice to us really. Bollocks to that.
And I was really beginning to like Air New Zealand.
Now, for those who want to check this out, as I did, you can find the info here. I couldn’t find it at first, and after 10 minutes of searching the website, was beginning to think this was a figment of someones imagination – but no.
So, you dont have to pay the fees if you pay using:
- Internet banking (POLi)
- Air New Zealand Airpoints Dollars™*
- Air New Zealand Travel Card
- Cash or EFTPOS at an Air New Zealand Holidays store or travel agent
- *Bookings made with a mix of Airpoints Dollars and Credit/Debit card are not charged a CPF.
I’m personally curious as to how they are going to make it possible for us to book online and then pay in cash at an AirNZ store – but hey – I’m willing to go to the effort, and as with the bank, make them pay staff to a job that they have the sodding cheek to charge me for when I do it for them.
As an alternative, I wonder just how little they will let us pay on our Air Points – can we pay $5 on airpoints, the rest on CC, and then not pay the fee?
How bloody stupid is this? Still no line item for Staff Toilet Rolls though 
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The Virtual Coin Jar.
Filed under: Banks, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
I always wanted one of those oversized whisky bottles to put spare change in. I just never had one – consequently never really bothered to save change to be honest. When we first came here – we did have a Piggy Bank – actually it was a Chocolate fund cat. There wasn’t a Coffee fund cat available, so we made do.
But now ASB have decided that we probably aren’t saving our pennies any more – probably on account of we don’t use cash these days. So they have come up with a “Virtual” piggy bank for your loose change. called “Save the change”.
The idea is actually simple:
- Tell them to round up payments on your account to the next $1, $2, $5 or $10
- Tell them whether you want this on just your Eftpos Transaction, or all items, like Direct Debits, standing orders etc,
- Tell them which saving accounts you want it to go to,
- Then they “sweep” the extra “change” into that account each night.
Bit snazzy really.
And they aren’t even going to charge you to set the system up or make any changes to it – which is a minor miracle in itself.
Now when I first looked at this, you didn’t seem to be able to set this up from an Orbit account which is what I have. And that’s a good thing, so I was a bit chuffed at the bank for being sensible. Turns out you can, so I am explicitly state where you need to be very careful here:
If you have an Orbit account – which is a Revolving Credit account – or overdraft – you really do not want to be moving money to a saving account. You need as much money as you can sitting in the Orbit account.
This is because Orbit currently charges you 6.25% and Fastsaver only pays you 3.65%. So ever dollar you have in Fastsaver, rather than in Orbit is costing you still costing you 2.4%. (actually its more than that, because the 3.65% you are earning is taxed.)
So this system only works if you are in credit on your Orbit account (and Im guessing that the majority of people are not) – otherwise stay well away! And smack on the hand for ASB because they are being a bit naughty here.
Of course – this all begs the question: how much did ASB pay to get all this set up, and as they aren’t charging any fees to setup or run this – why the hell do they still charge me fees to run my bank accounts?????
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Bank Charges when traveling to Australia 2
So what do the banks screw you out of on top of the odd company trying to get you to pay extra for no reason?
Well, it felt like we needed to Phd in something-or-other to understand the charge structure and whether we were better off getting cash out or paying on a credit card. So here is the fee structure from ASB
Cash Withdrawals Overseas:
$5.00 charge each time.
And then there’s this little gem – which applies to both Cash Withdrawals and Credit card transactions.
Offshore services margin
All cash withdrawals made at an overseas ATM using your ASB ATM or EFTPOS card will either first be converted into US dollars and then into New Zealand dollars or converted directly from the currency in which the cash withdrawal was made into New Zealand dollars at the applicable conversion rate.
Offshore service margins of 1.1% are added to the converted New Zealand dollar amount of each cash withdrawal made using your ASB ATM or EFTPOS card at an overseas ATM, excluding those withdrawals made using Commonwealth Bank of Australia ATMs.
The offshore service margins comprise a Visa international service assessment of 0.85% imposed on ASB by Visa and passed on to you, and an ASB margin of 0.25%.
The converted amount and the offshore service margins will appear on your statement.
For overseas cash withdrawals made using Commonwealth Bank of Australia ATMs an ASB retail exchange margin of 0.7% is included in the conversion rate by ASB. The total converted amount (including the ASB retail exchange margin where applicable) will appear on your statement.
What the bleeding hell does that mean?
Well in short – it means they are going to make a profit out of the conversion from NZD to the foreign currency. The problem is that some profit is already loaded into the exchange rate, so this is on TOP of that profit.
But the real dastardly bit is the part where they say they will either convert straight from NZD to the foreign currency if you withdraw cash – or they will bounce it via USD first. Now why are they doing that?
Basically, because they can skim some more money off the transaction by effectively trading currency at your expense if there is a wide variation in the currencies. Like the Holiday Inn and its 1.5% surcharge: in itself its small amounts, but added together with all the transactions occurring – its gotta add up. I wish I knew how it all worked - but like much in banking its all shrouded in mystery and complicated mathematics – so we as the consumer cant really ever check things like this. Which is annoying and quite frankly wrong. What are the banks hiding?
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Bank Charges when traveling to Australia.
NOTE: Opps – this got stuck in drafts rather than getting posted, so should actually have been posted before the “What the Shysters at the Holiday Inn did next”.
Sorry for any confusion.
If there’s one thing guaranteed to get my blood boiling that is not anything to do with immigration – its bank charges. I read today that New Zealand is following Australia in taking a class action against the banks for overcharging on “special fees” such as dishonour fees: charging $30 when it actually costs them about $1 to process the thing.
However still no-one is shouting about the ridiculous amount we get charged to spend money on our New Zealand cards when we go abroad. Even more disgusting when you consider that all the New Zealand banks apart from Kiwibank are actually owned by Australia – so why the bloody hell are they charging us fees when we visit their country and try to spend our money. All the money they screw out of us in profits comes here anyway – so it really is beating the crap out of us when we are down.
This evening we ate in the Hotel Restaurant at the Holiday Inn. As we went to sign the bill (which was being charged to our room) we saw a notice on the bottom of the receipt saying that there was a 1.5% charge added if you paid by credit card. Now this just pisses me off!
Companies should not expect their customers to pay their bank fees. We pay our own for crying out loud. But this got us wondering: were they expecting us to pay this 1.5% charge on our room bill as well?
Oh yes – they were!
Unfortunately when we asked about it at the front desk we were pointed (literally) to a sign (single) on the desk what mentions the charge.
Ok – I don’t care – its not on the booking form when you book the room, we weren’t told about when we checked in– the (single) sign was not pointed out to us, and it was only that we actually tend to read receipts that meant we knew were going to be charged extra on our bill. We asked for a business card for the manager and were given a feedback form to fill in.
Um – I don’t want a feedback form – I want the charge taken off and I want to speak to the manager! Now we were severely peeved. Eventually I decided that I was not going to be able to sleep while I was this angry. This is supposed to be relaxing trip – a chance to get well after the last few years of stress and illness: so to have to greedy money grabbing hotel decide to screw us out of extra money was not something I needed to deal with right now.
We eventually managed to get hold of a duty manger, and asked for the charge to be removed. This went reasonably well in that the charge was taken off, but I don’t think she really ever got why I was so angry – she kept asking what else had they done to upset me or what else was lacking in the hotels service. It is completely lost on these people that screwing their customers out of even a cent more than they should be is just wrong. Its unethical, its dishonest and it relies on the customers not noticing. And it is the most appalling customer service.
Lets be clear on this:
They do it because they know almost none their customers will notice the extra charge, and if they do, they won’t say anything about it.
Those of us that object to it get the charge removed.
Be one of those people!
Please don’t give them the pleasure of treating you like a mug. You already pay extra bank charges to buy anything when you go abroad – so don’t be conned into paying the companies bank charges as well. It’s a cost of them doing business – just like buying toilet rolls for the staff toilets. They don’t ask you for an extra dollar on your bill so the staff can wipe their bottoms do they? So why do they feel they can charge you to cover their bank charges?
BTW – the same thing happened this evening at the Crowne Plaza restaurant- owned by the same parent company (Intercontinental Hotels Group- IHG). Again – no mention when we made the booking, no one told us when we arrived, we just spotted the (single) sign on the desk. We spoke to the maitre’d before we sat down and said we wouldnt pay it – and could he let us know if this was a problem as we would not take the table if it was. He immediately told us that there would be no charge, and confirmed that later in the meal.
They know damn well they are breaking consumer law by not making clear extra charges at the time of booking, and they know damn well that they have to remove the charge if people tell them to.
Is what I say to this behavior!
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