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.”

  • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    “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.”

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • applepie@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      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

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • applepie@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          I never taken it to court but I deff made them do their paper work over shit like this and has got to have coat them thounsands of dollars to get various paper pusher to comply with my legally supported requests.

    • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      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…?

    • Peppycito
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        I have a beef with all the trading firms because of the fee to leave thing that really needed congressional action. No business should be able to charge a fee when you cut ties.

  • Magister@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      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.

  • a9249@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    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:

    1. 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.
    2. Inheritance cheque was “Lost” and took 2 years to recover the money. Thank fuck for taking a photo of it on arrival.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      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.

    • VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      I switched from Scotiabank to Tangerine (owned by Scotiabank) and went from 17$ a month with 5 free e-transfer to a 0$ a month with unlimited e-transfer. And the rates are also fair. And I qlso got a free 200$ for switching bank lol.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    Yeah TD sucks. I was a cuatomer since the 90s when it merged with Canada Trust. I had mortgage, house ins, bike insurance, and RRSPs with them. it slowly got worse. The final straws were offering a prime plus .25% LOC and once I used it they did a randome re-eval and bumped up the variance rate, it went from about 4% to 7% and a then 12%. They did not want to discuss the practise. But shortly after I knew I had a payment coming from my account so put cash in in the morning. Checked it all at night and all went through fine. next day I have a NSF charge. They switched the deposit order so it went in after the night withdrawal. I went to TD that day and started cancelling everthing with them. So for them trying to make a quick shady $45 bucks they lost all my business…they don’t even care they lose customers, they just keep screwing the ones that stay

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      We do. People just get stuck thinking the bank is the only way. We switched to CU years ago after multiple screwings by TD

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    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.

    The contracts, typically signed by two parties, were initially created to protect trade secrets or intellectual property but have evolved into a common tool to silence people who have been wronged: financially, professionally or, in the case of sexual assault victims, physically and mentally.

    Can’t Buy My Silence, a group that campaigns for legal changes related to misuse of nondisclosure agreements, estimates that 95 per cent of civil suit settlements in Canada now include one.

    After Go Public contacted BMO about the case, a spokesperson called Mireau to let him know the bank had reconsidered, and had deposited the other half of his stolen money into his account.

    Last year, the Canadian Bar Association swiftly passed a resolution, committing to discourage the use of these agreements to silence victims of abuse, harassment and discrimination in the workplace, schools and other organizations.


    The original article contains 1,103 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • mad_asshatter@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Very poor summary. Bank and complainant both change between start and end.

      Ultimately, this summary is 100% useless.

      • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        This bot often is. It seems to only randomly cut out sentences and paragraphs. You’d think that with today’s LLMs it would be possible to create something much better.

        • howrar@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          Of course it’s possible. The question is whether someone is willing to pay for it out of their own pockets. Compute isn’t particularly cheap.