ANZ: Wallet-rape by bank fees

I should have known when I read Poneke's tale about the cafe at Karori Park that I would not escape my own brand of torture.

We discovered that since we paid off our mortgage with the ANZ Bank, they have been charging fees like a wounded bull.

$1 per cheque. That's $4 for four cheques.
60 cents for each eft-pos transaction. That's $41.40 for 69 of them.

There were over $50 in bank charges for a 3 week period beginning April 22nd.

To put this in context, we have not paid bank fees for most of 20 years. When our home loan was paid off last month, we were not asked what account we might like or communicated with in any as to any change of status with respect to our account. What has happened has been a change without any advice or notification. Maybe the Terms & Conditions allow for this sort of thing, but you would think at least one customer service brain cell might realise this wasn't a good way to treat a longtime customer.

The fees we are currently being charged do not conform with ANY ANZ account fee schedule I have been able to locate on their web site. All the transactions we are being charged for should be free or cheaper. So on Sunday I sent a "SecureMail" via the ANZ Internet banking web site asking why this was the case. I have reservations about e-mail for this as I know how it works: someone sees the first two words, bangs you into a some slot that isn't appropriate, then chalks it up on the daily stats as "Job done!" and off to lunch they go.

I got a reply today. As I suspected would happen, whoever read it, saw "mortgage" and fired back directing me to the Home Loans department about my home loan. They hadn't actually read my note.

I responded saying "I DON'T HAVE A HOME LOAN" and asking them to answer the question I had put. I felt bad using caps, but they had completely ignored this when I said it in my first note. I should have just phoned. Silly me. I'll phone them tomorrow anyway. I knew better and made the mistake of trusting.

We're moving everything to Kiwibank anyway. The savings are already there, just a few automatic payments to migrate and we can ditch the ANZ for all transactions. But I want my $50 back.