Redneck Bank Stops Accepting New Applications
POSTED
ON BY Ken Tumin
I'm afraid it's another example of a high-yield account becoming overloaded. Redneck Bank has stopped accepting new applications. If you click on the open your account button at RedneckBank.com, it forwards you to a PDF document where they mention that they have temporarily stopped accepting new accounts because their phones are "goin' crazy." They've received a lot of publicity, not only from blogs and forums, but also from newspapers and Bankrate. Bankrate has been listing Redneck Bank's Mega Money Market Account for the last couple of weeks.
Redneck's sister banks, AmericaNet Bank and Evantage Bank, both still seem to be accepting new applications as of 4/08/09. The "open-your-account" links at those sites take you to the online applications where you can apply for both the Rewards Checking and the Mega Money Market. But we may soon be seeing changes from those banks. A reader just reported being told by an Evantage Bank CSR that they're cutting the reward checking rate starting 4/16/09. I'm trying to get details from the CSR to find out the new rate. Please leave a comment, if you've received any info on this.
Update 4/10/09: I just received the following email from an AmericaNet bank CSR:
All three banks lowered the balance caps last month. For the reward checking account, the balance that qualifies for the 5.25% APY fell from $25K to $10K. For the Mega Money Market account, the account changed so that only the first $35K qualifies for the 3.10% APY.
As I described in this post, RedneckBank.com, Evantage.com and AmericaNet.com are internet divisions of three Oklahoma banks which are all owned by the Huckabay family. The three banks have separate FDIC charters, but they've been keeping these accounts very similar. So we'll have to see if this continues.
For details about these banks and accounts, please refer to the following posts:
Other Reward Checking Accounts
To find reward checking accounts in other areas of the nation or to learn more about these accounts, please refer to my High Yield Checking website.
Redneck's sister banks, AmericaNet Bank and Evantage Bank, both still seem to be accepting new applications as of 4/08/09. The "open-your-account" links at those sites take you to the online applications where you can apply for both the Rewards Checking and the Mega Money Market. But we may soon be seeing changes from those banks. A reader just reported being told by an Evantage Bank CSR that they're cutting the reward checking rate starting 4/16/09. I'm trying to get details from the CSR to find out the new rate. Please leave a comment, if you've received any info on this.
Update 4/10/09: I just received the following email from an AmericaNet bank CSR:
Our Rewards checking rate will not be changing from the 5.25, and we have not had any talk of our rate changing
All three banks lowered the balance caps last month. For the reward checking account, the balance that qualifies for the 5.25% APY fell from $25K to $10K. For the Mega Money Market account, the account changed so that only the first $35K qualifies for the 3.10% APY.
As I described in this post, RedneckBank.com, Evantage.com and AmericaNet.com are internet divisions of three Oklahoma banks which are all owned by the Huckabay family. The three banks have separate FDIC charters, but they've been keeping these accounts very similar. So we'll have to see if this continues.
For details about these banks and accounts, please refer to the following posts:
- Evantage Bank Reward Checking Review
- Redneck Bank Reward Checking Review
- AmericaNet Bank Reward Checking Review
- Review of the banks' Mega Money Market Account
- History of Redneck Bank
Other Reward Checking Accounts
To find reward checking accounts in other areas of the nation or to learn more about these accounts, please refer to my High Yield Checking website.
The new rates are as follows:
Rewards Checking
4.00% APY* on daily balances less than or equal to $10,000.00**
1.00% APY* on daily balances greater than $10,000.00**
Rewards Checking accounts limited to two per Social Security number.
Mega Money Market
2.00% APY* on daily balances less than or equal to $35,000.00
1.00% APY* on daily balances greater than $35,000
Mega Money Market accounts limited to one per Social Security number.
Important: Please note that since the rates are changing in the middle of the
monthly statement cycle, your next statement will reflect a “blended” interest rate combining the higher rate during the first part of the statement cycle and the lower rate during the last part of the statement cycle.
When he gets home tonight I hope his mother crawls out from under his trailer and bits him.
Don't do business with these people.
Customer service is friendly & helpful, but ach transfers & billpays, are severely limited to $2500 per transaction per day(inbound as well as out).
Apparently, there is also a significant delay to processing all transactions due to 2nd hand processing by a separate "clearing" bank.
Evidently, this market is so small (Mustang, Ok) that Redneck chooses not to process it's own transactions.
These are significant limitations that add at least several business to any and all transactions.
Something worthy of consideration regardless of the interest rate.