A few days ago, U.S. Bank lowered the public rate on the Smartly Savings account from 3.60% to 3.00% APY. They are now sending a letter in the mail to some customers indicating that they are no longer eligible for that increased rate. Going forward, these customers will get a lower rate of .05%.
Pretty strange to differentiate between customers. Perhaps they are going to boot off all existing customers and keep the 3.00% rate only for new customers? We’ll have to wait and see.
U.S. Bank also offers an elite money market account with an interest rate of 4.25% with at least $25,000 deposited and then maintained. There’s also a 4.40% 5-month CD. (Not everyone gets the 4.25% so enter your zip code first to check.)
Personally, if they boot me off the 3%, I’ll move any cash away from the Smartly savings account into my brokerage account and buy SGOV ETFs with the funds.
Thanks to the multiple readers who sent this in.
I got the good NERF letter earlier on the v1 card and the new Savings .05% NERF which takes effect on September 11th no less. They also stealthily raised the monthly maintenance fee on the Smartly checking account from $6.95 to $12 per month. They have this odd policy of charging then waiving the fee each month in the transaction history. Even the Smartly savings has a $5 monthly fee. All fees are waived if you have the Smartly suite of products though. I think they have Michael Scott working as head of promotions at U.S. Bank. ; ) That’s ok I got my 4% card golden ticket and I’ll just grab the CD and/OR MMA for 4.4% or 4.25% for my zip code.
Good nerf letter for Smartly Visa, but then received this rate drop on Smartly Savings… doesn’t matter to me – all the required funds for the Smartly Visa are invested in brokerage. No idea what US Bank is doing here but I’ll stay on the 4% back Visa until they completely rug pull me.
Same. This bank is so clueless.
So if you got the good nerf letter, but also the savings rate nerf, are you Smartly v1.75.0?
I hope they’re planning out their build numbers over there.
Maybe next they’ll roll out 3% savings rate but only on weekends.
Didn’t Capital One just get sued for giving crap interest rates to existing customers while luring in new customers with better rates? What are they even thinking?
How is this bank still in business?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bancorp#/media/File:US_Bank_footprint_2023-09.png
Check out it’s CEO and you will know why
The elite money market has a max of 4.00 on there online offer as a new customers, but when i sign in it shows 3.75. No online cs can explain why. I’ll go in branch to satisfy my curiosity why its lowering like this other then typical usb games.
Who could possibly have seen this coming?
“All glory to the Hypnotoad!”
At this point they should just rename it to Dumbly savings and Gotcha checking.
I have a savings account (not sure if it’ll be nerfed) but if I wanted to get the CD or MM interest rate do I need to open another account for it?
Holy moly, that’s egregious. If I was treated that way, I’d pull all my funds. Let them fail.