PerkStreet Financial $100 Checking Bonus
This post was written by Mode on December 3, 2009
Posted Under: Bank Deals & Bonuses,Bankmode Buzz,Checking,Personal Finance,cash back,online banking
Posted Under: Bank Deals & Bonuses,Bankmode Buzz,Checking,Personal Finance,cash back,online banking
Here’s an update to one of the easiest bank deals in all of bank bonuses history. PerkStreet Financial has increased their $50 checking bonus to $100! The only reason this is such a big deal is because the requirement is simply open an account and Voila! $50 bucks in your pocket. But now, it’s a whopping $100 in your pocket!
As mentioned, it’s as simple as spending money. You just open a free checking account with a minimum deposit of $25. Then, just leave it open for 3 months, and you’ve got yourself a hundred bucks.
The promotion is set to expire 12/31/09. Click Here to access the promo page.
Reader Comments
HAH! I’m glad I waited
Definitely signing up now.
Yeah, one of our team members signed up for the $50 deal and when I saw that they doubled the bonus I had to throw it in his face. Good job Mr. Patient!
Thanks guys.
Is it back to $50 now?
No, lock it in before it does, banked this deal when it was good.
James
I clicked on the link and it doesn’t have the 100$ deal. The 50$ deal is promoted. How do I get the 100$ deal?
I opened the account, but I received an email one week after opening that was saying that I need three consecutive months of min $1000 direct deposit. does it mean I won’t receive that $100 if I don’t have direct deposit req.?
Does anyone know if this was a one shot deal (had it ever been seen before), or is this done periodically? I would hate to go for the $50 and then see a $100 offer a few weeks later.
There are several problems with this bank, so I would warn potential customers to be aware of the fine print. Although PerkStreet’s website has the appearance of being clear about their policies, I found that not to be the case. These “fine print” policies seem designed to (1) make it difficult to move money out of the account, and (2) to limit the cashback that you can earn. Below are examples.
(1) They have a limit of $1500 on incoming online transfers in an entire *month*! They don’t tell you about this anywhere except when you actually try to move money into your account. When I called them about it, they said that they have this restriction for new customers and I was still in my first month. After a couple more calls, I realized that they will increase this limit to $2500 after six months.
Stated reason: Security.
Suspected motive: To limit the amount of money you can spend to get cashback.
(2) They have a limit of $500 on outgoing online transfers. So, say you move $5000 into your account to get 2% cashback. You are stuck with that money with them for the rest of the month (unless you adopt a slower paper check route).
(3) They have a limit of $1500 on daily expenses and explicitly say on their website that it can be waived simply by making a phone call. I had to book two one-way international flight tickets that cost a total of over $1500. I booked these and called them to waive the limit. They refused to do so because I was still in my first month. There is no notice about waivers not being allowed in the first month anywhere. As a result, I have to now spend much more money re-booking that ticket just because PerkStreet does not allow me to spend my own money.
Stated reason: Security for new customers. They claim that all banks have spending limits on debit cards. Really? Bank of America did not.
Suspected motive: Limiting spending => limiting cashback.
(4) When I tried to circumvent the limitation in (1) above to move more money into my account using FedEx, there was another surprise! The first FedEx check takes not 1 day as stated, but about 9 days for some reason. Again, some vague security reason that is incomprehensible to rational beings is given as an explanation.
Bottomline: It is not easy to get much cashback because of their restrictive policies on what you can do with your money. And they make it harder to move money out of the account while not giving any interest on it. As for the 5% cashback, they are on such specific and tiny items that I have never been able to get 5% cashback so far.