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.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Commonwealth Bank Of Australia lose the plot.
It’s an Aussie bank. but they own ASB, and if you emigrate from the UK and want to bank with ASB, these are the people that you would open the account with in London. So you need to know what the imbeciles have cooked up now as their latest scheme.
According to The Australian (thanks to Kiwiblog):
THE Commonwealth Bank has threatened its employees with disciplinary action, including dismissal, if they do not report criticism of the bank made by others on social media channels, including Facebook.
Bank employees have been told they must immediately notify their manager if they become aware of “inappropriate or disparaging content and information stored or posted by others”, including non-employees, in the “social media environment”.
Which I guess means that anyone reading this who works for the bank needs to report that I think these people are absoulte tossers, who would look really comfy in a George Orwell book. If they had the brains to read one. Which I doubt, because if they had they would understand just how unbelievably stupid and evil this is.
(Hubby would like to express his surprise – which can also be reported – that it took me till the second line to call them imbeciles. He would further note that he prefers to term Cretins (actually he said something else, but that’s using foul language and I wont allow that on this blog).
It says the content may damage the bank and its reputation.
Because, clearly, you need the help of people like us to totally ruin your reputation and look like a bunch of blithering idiots with all the humanity and common sense of dung beetles.
As well as notifying their manager, employees must assist the bank with any investigation into the material, and its removal.
Good luck with that. I’m sure said employee, when telling you with a single finger where to stick this idea will find employment at another bank who values then as human beings and valuable staff members rather than forcing them to act as spies and thought police.
So, CBA (and ASB) if you ever take offence at anything I say about you which is uncomplementary – then please – do not fire your staff because of it. Instead – may I suggest you get off you fat overpaid arses and listen to the fact that a customer of yours is pissed off with your crap service and do something about it.
Where the hell do these people get these ideas? And they have the sodding gaul to charge me money for this shite?
“The bank will amend the policy, where it is considered reasonable to do so, to ensure that all of its staff continue to be treated fairly.“
Ahem, too late (and due to the inevitable backlash in – you guessed it – social media). You threatened your staff, and more importantly you have basically threatened us (the customers who pay you money you ungrateful little scrotes) that if we say something bad about you and you find out – you will threaten us and force us to take it down. What are you – China?
Get a sodding grip and run your bank – which is after all what we actually pay for you.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
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?????
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
NZ interests rate holds at 3%
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
Alan Bollard (bless his little cotton socks), has held the official cash rate at 3% this morning. There are reasons for this – which basically comes down to we aren’t spending enough, so he has to keep it low. If we were spending he’s have to put it up to stop us.
Well, I’m doing my bit right now to ensure it doesn’t go up!
Overall, continued economic growth was expected to gradually absorb current surplus capacity over the next few years, Dr Bollard said.
Headline inflation was expected to move higher following the recent increase in the rate of GST.
The subdued state of domestic demand suggested this inflation spike would have limited impact on medium-term inflation expectations.
Translated as:
I can hear you talking but all I hear is “Blah Blah Blah”
If this is going to affect mortgage rates, we wont see it for a day or so, but I happened to be checking last week, and compared to a year ago, ASB’s rates are down quite nicely for longer term loans, but up for floating or short term loans. Still way too sodding expensive in my opinion – but ho hum.
As at 05:14:15 p.m., Sunday 20 December 2009
Housing Variable 5.75 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (6 Month) 6.00 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (12 Month) 6.25 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (18 Month) 6.75 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (24 Month) 7.25 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (36 Month) 8.00 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (48 Month) 8.50 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (60 Month) 8.75 % p.a.
ORBIT Home Loan 5.75 % p.a.
As at 09:27:19 a.m., Tuesday 19 October 2010
Housing Variable 6.25 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (6 Month) 6.35 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (12 Month) 6.45 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (18 Month) 6.60 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (24 Month) 6.70 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (36 Month) 7.10 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (48 Month) 7.45 % p.a.
Housing Fixed (60 Month) 7.75 % p.a.
ORBIT Home Loan 6.25 % p.a.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Tax Changes hit today.
Filed under: Banks, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ, Property & General Investing
GST rises from 12.5% to 15% (coffee has suddenly shot up from $3.50 for a Flat White to $4.00 for a flat white in the past few weeks – which I’m sure most people will realise is not a 2.5% rise in GST).
Income Tax goes down – so many people will see a nice little increase in their next pay packet. This one we personally won’t see till about next July as it all gets worked out in the wash of our tax return.
The tax changes for property investors don’t actually come into force yet – that’s not till next April, and a chat last week with my accountant showed that actually the changes haven’t been confirmed yet, so no one is 100% sure what the effect is going to be. Which is helpful. In a not-very-helpful sort of way.
So, to be on the safe side, I’m budgeting on paying the same amount of tax that we usually do, and as soon as hubby gets paid each month, I shovel the usual proportion of that money into a savings account (I’m using RaboPlus (now called RaboDirect) because the interest rate is higher and it takes the savings out of the hands of ASB). That should give us some leeway with our tax until we know for definate what the property investing taxes are going to change to. But at a rough estimate – its going to cost us a lot more than the cuts are giving us.
Which is nice. In a not-very-nice sort of way.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
ANZ saved the day :)
Filed under: Banks, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ, Property & General Investing
After getting really irritated with Westpac for being a bunch of inflexible overcharging scumbags – I was actually quite concerned about speaking to our other Investment Property bank about paying a small amount of the mortgage. I kinda felt that if I met any further obstinacy I was likely to spew. Or gnash my teeth so much I’d give myself a stonking headache.
So I popped into an ANZ branch to speak to someone and ask the same question: Can I use some of this money that ends up sitting in the transaction account – to pay down the mortgage.
Apparently I can.
There is a limit of 5% of the balance per year, or $10,000 which ever is greater – after which you pay break fees. Now I’m OK with that to be honest – these would always be the last mortgages I would choose to pay large sums off, because the interest is a business expense and therefore deductible. If I had $10k rattling around – it would be paying off our personal mortgage, which still has $55,000 to go on it. I had figured when we bought the rentals that I would be highly unlikely to want to pay down anything substantial on these two mortgages for at least 5 years – if ever.
(Note: Mortgages on investment properties are treated differently to personal mortgages – you don’t necessarily need or want to pay off the mortgage, depending on how much risk you are comfy with and what your long term plans are. Whereas there are just no benefits to having a personal mortgage that I could possibly think of. Unless you are the Bank’s side of the equation – it’s really rather cushy for them!)
So, the $600 sitting in Westpac has been removed and transfered to our ANZ transaction account, and that gives me $1100 to pay off the ANZ mortgage.
It won’t save me much money in interest payments (about $2 a week) , but at this point its taking me a tiny step in the direction I want to go in. And I guess it’s always better to be going where you want to go, than where the bank wants you to go.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Why you shouldn’t get a mortgage from WestPac
Filed under: Banks, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ, Property & General Investing
(Prefaced by saying that they still have the best mortgage calculator I’ve seen – so they ain’t all bad).
Today’s issue comes to you courtesy of Westpac’s draconian break fees – the sledgehammer they whack you on the noggin with for daring to want to pay down some of your mortgage.
Ive asked my banks for break fees before, because i wanted to re-arrange my mortgages when the interest rates started dropping. Westpac at the time were trying to charge way more than our other banks.
Today I have asked if I can use just $600 which is sitting in a Westpac transaction account to pay down one of my investment mortgages. Now the money is only sitting there cos Westpac, like all NZ banks, refuse to take a direct debit from my ASB Business account to pay the mortgage, so I have to set up an automatic payment and pay the funds into a Westpac account that I neither want nor need. But because they refuse to do Direct Debits, and also refuse to work out a standard monthly interest payment, I have to ensure that enough money is transfered to always be able to pay for a 31 day month, which means that over time, the excess paid in a 3o day or 28/29 day month builds up.
Now usually when it gets to about this amount, I transfer the funds back to ASB, where I can actually use it. This month, I decided that rather than doing that, I would like to actually pay these small amounts off the mortgage. It’s my Highest interest rate, it also has the highest Loan to Value Ration (LVR) of any of our mortgages – in fact it’s about 100% of the current value of that property. So for many reasons its actually not a bad idea to pay even a little off that one. So how much are they gonna charge me to pay them $600?
$151.77 
Yep – an eye watering 25% of the amount I actually want to pay off the mortgage. Seems theres not even the option to pay off upto 10% a year from your fixed rate mortgage, which most banks allow.
Now to be fair – I do need to take some responsibility here – I signed the mortgage papers without understanding this – and I didn’t make it clear to my broker (That I remember anyway) that I expect to be able to pay a certain amount off a fixed rate mortgage each year without penalty. On saying that – I do feel mortgage brokers should include this automatically for you anyway. They are supposed to be looking out for our best interests, and I think this is something that should be included as a matter of course.
Now, I’ve looked back at some old blogs Ive written on this topic – and there is supposed to have been an investigation into ridiculous break fees charged by New Zealand banks. And Phil Goff, the leader of the Labour party called for banks to be more flexible. But it seems sod all has happened.
Be warned: Westpac have draconian and inflexible charges if you want to pay even a cent off a Fixed Rate mortgage. The fees are unreasonable, and the bank is known to be inflexible if you start having problems – which is beyond stupid. I happen to know that rather than helping some people by altering the terms or rates on some mortgages, Westpac forced 2 mortgagee sales and lost a staggering $350,000 on the sale of those properties in the block our investment is in. A decision which directly affected the Value of our own apartment, which is what makes our LVR on that so high.
I absolutely recommend you never get a mortgage with Westpac! Ever!
If anything goes wrong – they won’t give an inch, and will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than help you out. As much as I might dislike ASB charging me fees – I will never move banks because they still let me actually manage my mortgages – certainly Westpac don’t. I have asked my new manger (I think I’m on my 6th one in three and a half years – they seem to get through staff like a case of the runs) if someone can try and be flexible over this – we will see if I get anywhere.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Is Credit Scoring changing?
Filed under: Banks, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
Credit Scoring is the really blunt instrument that banks use to determine whether you are worthy to borrow money from them. They don’t really look at much, but essentially get a “Credit History” on you off a Credit Reference Agency. (Equifax or Experian in the UK, VEDA in New Zealand).
Now, according to an article I came across in the Herald, that might be changing.
It seems the privacy commissioner here in New Zealand is looking at whether or not lenders could be given access to more information about your financial history – so they get a better picture. Now usually, I’m the last person to believe that people should get more info on you than they have already. In fact I can get quite “testy” with people who insist they have a right to private information that they – in fact – don’t have a sodding right to. (Vodafone for example who claimed I was being “rude” when i refused to give them contact details for a “Friend” so I could get a bloody mobile phone.)
In a case like this though – where I’m asking a bank to lend me money – I actually don’t mind them having as much financial information as they want. I’m still not going to give them my friends details though!
The idea is that credit referencing would move to “Positive Reporting” – that is how good you are at paying your bills, what sort of lending you already have, who its with and for how much. Rather than right now where all they can see is if you have defaulted on a payment. Some people in the industry also think its a good idea to be able to see how much of a loan is used – which is great when looking at any credit cards or revolving credit loans you have: the limit may be $20k, but if you only routinely use $2k of it – why should a lender only look at it as a $20k loan.
In its submission to the Privacy Commissioner, finance company GE Money said the number of people being declared bankrupt or approved for the brankruptcy [sic] alternative, the No Asset Procedure regime had been on the rise.
It calculates the “negative” credit reporting system gives only a 10 per cent picture of a person’s true credit risk. The changes proposed so far would provide an additional 20 per cent, it said. Including current account balances and 24 months’ payment history would boost that to 50 per cent.
That’s a bit scary really. You mean to tell me that decisions on giving credit to people are currently made on the basis of 10% of the information???? No wonder the world got so screwed up with a credit crunch and recession. Even with these changes – it doesn’t look really good.
So all in all – I’m in favour of more info going to the lenders - on the proviso that they can’t ask silly questions that have no relevance – like Vodafone insist on.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
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?
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
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!
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Avalon’s Guide On Facebook
-
