Charles Schwab Bank - High Yield Investor Checking

Average Score:

•   New customer - very satisfied so far

  I left Bank of America after 32 years of banking with them; their fees and their terrible customer service finally got to me.

  I spent a looonnngg time researching what bank I should move to and ended up deciding on Schwab. They pay good rates, even on checking accounts, have a great online banking site, good customer service, and low fees. While they don't have ATMs, they reimburse fees, so you can use any ATM you want.

  I've only been a customer for a couple of weeks, but am very happy so far. Their online banking site is great; very easy to use and let's you do everything from there. The two times I've interacting with their customer service it's been great; I waited only a minute on hold and the person on the other end was friendly and helpful.
  

  Posted by drew -- July 27, 2010

•   Schwab = Hassle-Free Checking

  My husband and I have had a joint Schwab account for over a year now, and we really like it. We chose it because we wanted to make a little extra money on the balance we kept in our checking account anyway and because we already had a Schwab brokerage account for our stocks and bonds. It's been to great have everything localized to one institution. One online log-in lets us see all of our financial info at the same time, and Schwab is great about being completely paperless. All our statements come by e-mail. The major drawback to a Schwab Bank account is the lack of local branches. If you use a lot of cash and/or don't receive your paychecks via direct deposit, it could be problematic. But for us, it's amazing. We each have a debit card we use for everything, and we know exactly how much money we have at all times. If we absolutely need cash (which happens maybe once a month), Schwab does unlimited ATM fee rebates, so we can use any ATM anywhere to get what we need. If we need to deposit a paper check, we send it to them by mail in one of the prepaid business reply envelopes they provided us with. They have 24-hour customer service that always gets us an actual banker (even in the middle of the night!). No call centers in India from Schwab. Occasionally we come across a person who can't answer our question, but they always quickly transfer us to someone who can. I would absolutely recommend this account to anyone who wants to cut down on their paper and have everything all in one place for easy review with great customer service and lots of free perks.

  Posted by kissaturk -- July 12, 2009

•   The premier online checking account

  I've used Schwab for my checking for about two years now. Prior to that, I'd used checking accounts at about a dozen other banks, both online banks and branch banks, but find Schwab superior to all of them.

  First, the goodies: competitive, variable interest (once as high as 2%, now about .75%) that averages a little under half what you'd get on a good CD. So even the money you don't set aside for "saving" is earning you interest. Second, I never pay ATM fees - ever. Schwab rebates all fees in their network, which is fast that I haven't encountered a single ATM where my fee wasn't rebated. The result is that I never need to carry cash because the nearest ATM is always free. There's also NO MINIMUM balance, as in zero dollars. Pretty nifty, since it means if I like another checking account better, I can switch my money but leave the account open - and switch back if the terms of that competing account change. Hasn't happened yet, but I like options.

  Downside - it can be a little difficult to deposit checks, because Schwab has almost no branches. Typically, I deposit checks to accounts with other banks and then transfer the money via ACH. It's a slight inconvenience but well worth it.

  Posted by Geremiah -- June 30, 2009