This whole situation has me completely flabbergasted.
Tl;dr - With three days notice, Deutsche Bank is going to start charging us 400 euros per quarter to keep "extra" money in our savings account. When asked if we could move the extra money into an investment account they said they didn't have any for us.
The full story:
I'm an American, currently living/working in Germany. We have all of our money in a Deutsche Bank savings account. Three days ago we got an informal e-mail from a person who *claimed* to be with the bank. Without much explanation it said, "Please sign the attached custodial agreement for your bank account. If you fail to do this your account could be closed." OBVIOUS scam, right?
I sent an e-mail to DB and they said it was legitimate. A few hours later the person who sent the e-mail called and explained that any money in Savings over a certain amount is subject to negative interest and we will have to pay a fee for it. (In our case that would be about 400 euros per quarter!) He said we had until August 1 to figure things out. I looked at the agreement he sent and confirmed the date: August 1. (At first he said July 1st but then he checked and it was August 1.)
We had to go to the bank anyway so while we were there we asked for confirmation. They said it was all legit and they printed out copies for my wife and I to sign, explaining that the agreement was just to confirm that we were aware of the charge. We didn't notice that the agreements were identical EXCEPT the dates had been changed to July 1. (This is our fault. We should have studied the agreement more carefully before signing it. We had studied the one that was e-mailed to us, and just thought they printed the same one.)
So now, with no previous warning or notification, we have two days to move a bunch of money into another bank or an investment or somewhere. (We can't just open another savings account at DB. I checked.) I wrote to the bank and asked if they had any investments where we could move some of our money.
They wrote back and said, "Due to the high interest we do not have any investments available for you."
WHAT ON EARTH??? When does a bank not push their overpriced investment vehicles??? We don't speak German so two days is not enough time to move our money. So we will probably have to pay the stupid custodial fee until we can figure out what to do.
Not a happy camper right now.
Submitted June 29, 2021 at 05:45AM by TurkMcGill https://ift.tt/3x8qKD0
