Forum Highlights: Online Banking Outages, Sneaky Reward Checking Changes and Debit Card Fraud

I plan to regularly highlight a few of the forum posts. This is intended to help readers who may not regularly read the discussion forum. It will also give me a chance to recognize and give thanks to the DA members for their contributions to the website. I've listed a few recent forum posts on topics that I think may interest DA readers. If you don't see your username mentioned this time, keep posting and you will likely see your forum thread mentioned in my future highlight posts.

1. Planned Outages at Ally and Alliant - Both Ally Bank and Alliant Credit Union are planning system maintenance this Saturday (1/26/13) which will make online banking unavailable for part of the day. Hat tip to DA members Shorebreak and cumulus for posting this news.
2. Another problem with the Fed's policies - Savers know the problems, but this commentary at Business Insider has a good review of why it's problematic from an economic point-of-view, a "macro malpractice". Thanks to Shorebreak for posting on this.
3. Coppermark Reward Checking To End? - Thanks to DA member akapla01 who reported that Prosperity Bank of Texas is in the process of acquiring Coppermark Bank which may affect Coppermark's reward checking account. This is one of only two reward checking accounts in the nation that still offers 4.00% APY on balances up to $25K. As we have seen before, mergers are rarely good news for reward checking accounts.
4. Sneaky Reward Checking Changes at Independent Bank - Some banks will only notify customers of account changes by small notes in the account statements. That's what Independent Bank did with its reward checking account. One of the changes was an increase in the debit card usage requirement. Thanks to DA member elarh for posting on this.
5. Retirement Planning - Thanks to DA member 51hh for pointing out this useful common-sense article for retirement planning.
6. CD Ladder vs. Stock Market Fund - It always seems like the news media over-hypes stock market gains and ignores slow and steady investments like CD ladders. DA member Bozo provides some interesting insights on this.
7. $150 Checking Bonus In Los Angeles - I will occasionally post bank deals in the Banking Deals subforum. The last one I posted is a $150 bonus at a few LA branches of Bank of the West which is scheduled to end on Friday.
8. Way to Make Big Cash Withdrawals from Internet Banks - I noted an interesting Finance Buff post about how you can do a debit card cash advance to withdraw cash from an internet bank.
9. Why It Takes So Long To Process Debit Card Fraud Claims And Disputes - Thanks to DA reader pearlbrown for posting on a Consumerist article which provides an inside look at how banks handle debit card fraud claims and why it's important to distinguish between a fraud claim and a payment dispute.
10. Opening A CD With CIT Bank Requires A Lot Of Patience - If you had difficulty when you opened an account, please consider describing the problems in our bank reviews subforum. DA member jameslmorrison did a good job describing the problems he had with the CIT Bank CD application. Please consider also using the reviews subforum when an application goes smoothly.

Discussion Forum Tutorial

If you like a simple blog format, you can view the forum using this link. This page shows the latest featured threads in an expanded format that shows the first post of each featured thread. Click on the title of the post to view any comments for that post or to leave a comment. Unlike the blog, the forum requires you to log in before you can comment.

You can get to this Featured Threads page by using the forum menu and clicking on the "Featured Threads" link. Then click on the "Posts" link below the menu. I actually prefer the "Threads" view which shows just the title of the posts along with the number of comments or posts for each thread.

I'm the one who gives a thread "featured" status. I try to select those that I think are most interesting. The "Latest Threads" link in the forum menu will show you all of the threads including ones that haven't been marked as featured. The "Latest Posts" link will show you the latest forum comments.

Posting to the Forum

If you find a noteworthy bank deal or some interesting financial news, please consider posting this information in the forum. This can be done in 3 steps:

1. You have to be logged in to post in the forum. If you have never registered, just click the "Register" link on the top right of a DepositAccounts.com page. Note, you don't have to be logged in before you write your post, but it's required before the post can be submitted.
2. Find the appropriate subforum. Start at the top of the forum and click on the appropriate topic.
3. Click the "New Threads" button at the top of the subforum page, and follow the instructions. For the subforums that are specific to a particular bank, you first have to identify the bank. When you get to the message box, you can start typing your information. Note the icons at the top of the message box. These can be used to format your message. The one I use most is the link icon. This isn't active until you highlight the text that you want to convert into a link. Once the link icon is active, you can click on the icon which will open up a box where you can enter the web address.

Viewing and posting are more complicated in the forum than in the blog, but as I mentioned, this helps keep things organized. For more details on using the forum, please refer to my forum announcement post.