There is now a better $225 bonus available.
Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $150
- Availability: Nationwide
- Direct deposit required: Yes, one time $500 (see what counts here)
- Additional requirements: None
- Hard/soft pull: Soft, see below
- Credit card funding: Up to $500
- Monthly fees: $5, waivable
- Early account termination fee: No bonus if closed within 90 days
- Expiration date:
June 30th, 2016September 30, 2016December 31st, 2016January 31st, 2017
The Offer
- Direct Link
- Simply Right Checking: https://www.
santanderbank.com/us/pages/ personal/checking-accounts-04 - Basic Checking: https://www.
santanderbank.com/us/pages/ personal/checking-accounts-05 - Premier Plus Checking: https://www.
santanderbank.com/us/pages/ personal/checking-accounts-06
- Simply Right Checking: https://www.
- Receive $150 bonus doing the following: Open a Santander checking account, receive direct deposits totaling $500, and keep account open for 90 days.
You can either open the account online (and get to do the $500 credit card funding) or print out a coupon via the above link and bring it in-branch to open.
The Fine Print
- Offer is not available to current or former Santander customers who opened a Santander checking account between 01/01/2016 – 12/31/2016
- Bonus is considered interest and will be reported to IRS on Form 1099-INT. If multiple accounts are opened with the same signer, only one account will be eligible for the bonus
- Direct deposits include deposits made by your employer or a federal or state government agency or retirement benefits administrator and generally payments made by corporations or other organizations. It does not include deposits to your Account that are made by an individual using online banking or an Internet payment provider such as PayPal
Avoiding Fees
This bonus is valid on the following three account types: Basic, Classic, and Premier (not on Extra20 or Student accounts).
- Basic – This account has a non-waivable $5 monthly fee. $3 for NY and NJ.
- Simply Right Checking: $10 monthly fee is waived by making any transaction, including deposits, withdrawals, transfers or payments. Unclear if $750 monthly balance will keep the fee waived as well
- Premier – This account has a $30 monthly fee. Waived with $20k in combined balances.
Our Verdict
This offer isn’t as good as the Extra20 offer they used to offer, but this is no longer available and I doubt we’ll see that come back. $150 seems like their new standard offer. I think this offer is worth completing (and we’ve added it to our best bank bonus page). Here is how I’d complete it:
- Open the Simply Right Checking account (not the basic).
- Fund it the max $500 with a Barclay or Chase card that has a cash advance limit of $0 or close to $0.
- Do a $500 direct deposit. This will meet the direct deposit requirement and it will waive the first month’s monthly fee.
- Withdraw most of the money and set up
- an automatic bill pay (to a credit card or whatever) of $1 monthly to keep the account fee-free.
- Wait 90 days from account opening, then wait another 30 days for bonus to post.
- Close account.
We’ve also added this to our bank bonus database. Please keep in mind Santander has been cracking down on what counts as a direct deposit, go here for recent data points.
Hat tip to Maximizing Money
Does anyone know the BONUS CODE for the $400 current Santander promo which expires 3/31/21? Applied online & it asked for it during application.
DP
9/8 opened simply right checking in branch
9/26 $1000 university tuition billing account refund posted as UNIV EREFUND
9/29 $965 ACH from Cap1 Checking posted as P2P
9/29 $35 ACH from Cap1 Checking posted as P2P
11/09 $1000 ACH from PNC posted as P2P
11/14 $1000 ACH from Cap1 360 Savings posted as CAPITAL ONE N.A. CAPITALONE
11/14 $1000 ACH Wells Fargo Checking posted as IFI DDA TO DDA
11/30 $1000 ACH from SunTrust Checking posted as P2P
12/08 $150 bonus pending
I guess the university refund worked as DD? I kinda freaked when bonus didn’t post after all that time lol All that work for only $150… when can I safely close the account? Wait another 30 days? 60 days?
Sorry wrong thread, I’ll move it to the correct page.
Applied Apr 3 for a personal offer for $350 after $2k DD
May 5 done with DD from WF
July 3 Bonus came in
Success! Today, 6/20, I finally got my bonus for the account I opened on 1/30. I called last week, on 6/13, they gave me a reference number, I called back on 6/16 for a status update, and was told by bonus should post this week. Indeed it did, and as others have reported, they bumped it up to the $225, even though I applied when it was still $150. All is well that ends well, but man, that took a long time.
Called Santander to close/cancel my account. I was on hold listening to crappy Disney music for 4 minutes before taking to someone, total call took 9 minutes.
The first friendly droid had to transfer me to a second account specialist (with the same horrible on hold music). She asked why I was closing, and I said “I wasn’t using it as much as I thought I would”. She grunted, looked at the history, and said “It looks like you just signed up for the bonus.”
Overall, pretty painless.
Access is granted to the account for the next 2 months, but everything is closed out. Thanks DoC!
DP for those who gave up on Santander like I did:
1/31 – Applied for checking under the $150 bonus
2/15 – Account opened
3/01 – Opening deposit posts
3/15 – ACH push from Chase posts
6/12 – $225 bonus pending and available
I opened on 01/21/2017
DD 02/10/2017
90 Days after opening would have been 04/21/2017
Bonus should have been paid 30 days after 04/21/2017 = 05/21/2017
I called on 05/26/2017 and I was told by a representative that my DD didn’t qualify since it didn’t have the word “payroll” in the deposit. I indicated that the word “payroll” in the deposit name or description wasn’t a required and the representation didn’t have anything else to say other than I wouldn’t get the bonus without the world “payroll” in the deposit.
I filed a CFPB complaint on 05/27/2017 and Santander responded on 06/08/2017 indicating that I didn’t have a promotional code entered when I opened the account online but they would give me a $150 courtesy credit. Santander’s response indicating that a promotional code was required doesn’t make much sense since on the application page on Santander’s website said “Coupon will automatically be applied to online applications.” I suppose the fighting over the reason why their response to the CFPB complaint isn’t accurate doesn’t make much sense since they are providing the $150 bonus anyways.
Congrats on the bonus, in spite of the incompetent phone rep and CFPB response
Thanks for the DP
Success without intervention!
Opened Jan 15 2017
DD government posted late March
$150 Bonus posted Tuesday 5/30/17
Still no bonus for me. Applied on 1/30/17, account officially opened on 2/14/17, three different $500+ deposits posted between 2/17/17 and early March. Starting to get frustrated seeing data points from people in other threads who opened accounts after me for the larger promotion getting their bonus already.
My “direct deposit” from Cap360 was done late Feb and no bonus from Santander here. Since my DD was a bit later than those listed from members above, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, hoping it will post in the next few weeks.
According to the requirements in my notes you just have to do the dd within 90 days of opening. If others did theirs on day 10 and you did it on day 75, it’s all good. 🙂