PerkStreet Financial: Free $50 Promotion
Posted by Cap in Online Checking Account |Perkstreet Financial is now offering a 2% cash back debit card for six months!
2% Cash Back Detail
- To get 2% cash back for six months, you will have to open a new account online with at least a $25 deposit.
- You can earn cash back on all non-PIN debit card purchase.
- After six months, you’ll earn 1% cash back on all non-PIN debit card purchase.
- There’s also two other type of rewards offered: Free music and free coffee.
- If you choose the other rewards instead of cash back, you’ll earn double the reward for the first six months.
- Offer only available to brand new PerkStreet customer!
- Offer expires July 15, 2010 (in a month), so take advantage of the offer if you’re interested before it’s too late.
I gotta tell you, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen any account opening bonus offers from banks — or at least, one that doesn’t require you to jump through numerous hoops. PerkStreet Financial is now offering a $50 sign-up bonus for any new PerkStreet Financial checking account with a minimum deposit of $25. Deposit $25 and get $50? No hard credit inquiry? Sounds like a decent deal.
PerkStreet has partnered with the Bancorp Bank, member FDIC, to provide several of its banking services, such as FDIC insurance. The checking account, while lacking in any interest bearing capability, is actually quite decent. It touts a 1% “cash-back” debit card, giving you cash-back in the form of a Visa Gift Card, or a gift card to some of the leading retailers (such as Target & Amazon).
If you’re a proponent of debit card over a credit card but occasionally harbor hidden-jealousy for credit card rewards, then PerkStreet’s checking account with rewards debit card may just be what you’re looking for.
$50 PerkStreet Sign-Up Bonus Details
- Offer expires 2/28/2010.
- Open an account with a $25 minimum deposit.
- Keep the account active for three months
- You can keep account active by using your initial $25 deposit with your debit card
- $50 bonus will be credited into account within 15 business days at end of third month
- Valid for only first-time customers
Things to note:
- There is an account inactivity fee of $4.50! To avoid this fee, you can do any of the activities: make a transaction with your debit card, write a check that clears the account, use online bill pay, initiate a withdrawal, or make a deposit to the account.
- There is no hard credit pull with the regular account, but the Plus account with overdraft protection may have a hard credit inquiry (via Fatwallet forums).
- If you want to milk things even more, you can fund the account up to $500 with a credit card, which will count as a purchase on your credit card, and not a cash-advance. The initial funding will not cost you any fees from PerkStreet, but subsequent funding via credit cards will be charged 2% of funding amount.
PerkStreet Checking Account Features
- Visa Debit Card with 1% cash back, free music, or coffee
- Free checks, $25 deposit to open
- No minimum balance requirement
- No monthly fees when you use your account
- A large surcharge-free ATM network
- Free bill pay, switch perks without penalty
Look for a longer, in-depth review when I get a chance to test drive the account longer.
11 Comments to “PerkStreet Financial: Free $50 Promotion”
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November 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Awesome deal! I haven’t seen anything that good in a long time either. Most bonuses require you to deposit a much larger number.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Seems like a pretty decent deal. Just signed up. As Ashely mentioned, most bonuses these days requires a much larger deposit. I assume they’re just trying to get us to give the checking account + debit card a whirl.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Hi. I work for PerkStreet and, as Ecky says, we are encouraging people to give us a try. We offer more free ATMs than Bank of America and other banks (we have 37,000) and we offer 10x more rewards on debit than the average card.
Laurie McLachlan
PerkStreet Financial
December 4th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Watch out for these people.
You more then likely will not get the bonus.
There system is junk. Bonus does not get applied to every account because of software glitches.
“Thanks for your email; I apologize for the trouble. Please provide your full name or account number and I will reset your information. I think that there was a processing error in our New Accounts department as several other customers were affected as well.
Best Regards,
Steve
Customer Correspondence
The Bancorp Bank
409 Silverside Rd
Suite 105
Wilmington, DE 19809
302-385-5000″
December 4th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Thanks for chiming in Dave, I haven’t seen mass notice of having issues of people receiving their bonuses yet, but if Laurie (from Perkstreet) sees this, perhaps she can make sure everyone that has concern will get their opening bonuses straighten-out.
December 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
hI ,
I LIKE THE IDEAL OF GETTING REWARDS FOR YOUR SPENDING FROM YOUR CARD.YOU HAVE MORE THEN CHASE .
I WORK FOR A MAJOR COMPANY AN I BANK WITH THERE CREDIT UNION, BUT THERE IS NO REWARDS.
IT WOULD BE NICE IN THE FUTURE IF YOU CAN GET MILE POINT FOR THE AIRLINE- THAT WILL BOOST YOUR BIZ QUIK.
DO YOU HAVE A LOT OF CUSTOMER/
December 8th, 2009 at 7:20 am
I wanted to let you know that we straightened out the issue for Dave – I apologize for any confusion.
Also, thank you for the feedback Lonnie. I’m glad you like our rewards. I also like travel rewards and we’re definitely considering adding them to our program in the future.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:14 pm
You say the offer is valid until 2/28, but it’s 2/23 now and the offer doesn’t show on their website; the linkoffers.net affiliate jump on your link now points to a 2% for 90-days on non-PIN (you know, the ones that cost the merchant a whole boatload of cash per transaction?), not a $50-after-ninety-days deal.
The only $50 deal I could find is outside of your affiliate link; it requires a $250 initial deposit and a bucketload of non-PIN transactions. Either way, doesn’t currently seem worth the hassle.
June 2nd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I just signed up with them and they have my account up and running already, I can see my deposit it’s available for use, I’ve set up bill pay all of the companies that I set my bill pay up to were already in their system. This seems like a good bank and I plan to utilize their services and if they are as good as they seem I will be referring family and friends!
August 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
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.
August 17th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
My name is Jason Henrichs and I work for PerkStreet. I’ve corresponded with AV since his experience and also worked with our customer service team to improve the information he was delivered. We are always working to improve the experience and any customer’s feedback is appreciated. We are taking action on the areas of AV’s experience that can be corrected, but there are several parts of his claim that I’d like to better explain.
Unfortunately fighting fraud is a tremendous burden that has several impacts not just for the bank but for the customers as we establish a relationship. For AV’s first point, the limit does go up over time and with the deeper relationship. There are several ways you can get money in the account besides our free online transfer- by pushing the money from the other account, setting up direct deposit or sending a check. We recognized that this would limit a new customer’s ability to meet the $5,000 threshold which is why we put in a 90 day grace period where you earn 2% no matter what. If we were looking to bait and switch to keep your balance captive we certainly wouldn’t have done that. We keep a small share of the interchange earned when a customer uses the card and give most of it back to the customer. It is in our best interest to make sure customers can spend as much as they want while balancing the fraud exposure to us and to the customer.
On the daily limit, I’ve worked with the customer service agent on how to better handle the situation and apologize that it was not a stellar experience.
For your last point on the check, it is clearly stated in FAQs what the hold times are but let’s face it, wading through FAQs is a pain so you naturally picked up the phone where the representative was not clear in her explanation. Again, I’ve worked on the education that she should have inquired whether you were a new customer because their is an extra hold time for the first 30 days.
Unfortunately banks have done little to engender trust so we’re fighting little by little to do better and earn that back.
Any customer or potential customer can contact me directly if they have questions or suggestions: jhenrichs -at- perkstreet.com