Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $600
- Availability: AZ, CA, CO, ID, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, NV, NM, ND, OK, OR, SD, UT, WA, WI, WY
- Direct deposit required:Â No
- Additional requirements:Â Maintain an average monthly balance of $50,000 for first two full calendar months
- Hard/soft pull: Soft
- Credit card funding: $500 max, Visa/MC only
- Monthly fees: Yes, waiveable
- Early account termination fee: $25, 91 days
- Expiration date:Â August 19th, 2016
The Offers
- Receive a sign up bonus of $600 when you open a new Bank of the West Premier checking acocunt at a branch between July 9th and August 19th with a minimum opening deposit of $500 or more.
- You must also maintain a minimum of $50,000 in combined average monthly balances for each of the first two full calendar months immediately following the month in which the opening deposit posts to the account. (Includes other linked personal checking, savings, money market accounts, non-IRA CDs and eligible BancWest Investment Services accounts)
The Fine Print
- Opening deposit must be received and posted to the account no later than August 26th, 2016
- Account must be in open status and have a positive balance as of October 31st, 2016
- Bonus will be credited by November 30th, 2016
- Only available to the recipient of this mailer
- Limit of one consumer checking bonus per individual and mailing address.
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
The Premier checking account has a $30 monthly fee, this is waived if you maintain at least $50,000 in combined balances (same requirement as the bonus).
Interest Rates
Checking rate has an interest rate of 0.01 – 0.04 APY, best savings APY is 0.22%. To get over a 1% APY with their CD accounts, they need to be for 24 months at a minimum.
Our Verdict
$600 is a massive bonus, but let’s see if it actually makes sense to sign up or not. Your best bet would be to apply for this promotion towards the end, that way you need to keep the account open for less time. Let’s say you apply for the account in Mid August and time things perfectly so you have $50,000 in the account on September 1st. You’ll need to keep that money in the account for two full months at minimum to trigger the bonus requirements. If you had that $50,000 in just a 1% APY account you’d be earning ~$40 per month. So you’ve already lost $80 in value there.
It’d be cheaper to just pay the $30 monthly fee than losing out on that $40 per month in interest after the first two months (you’d need to keep it open for another one or maybe two months so that is another $30-$60). In the end you’re losing about $140 in value just from lost interest compared to a 1% APY account, obviously you can earn more than this.
This isn’t a terrible bonus if you have a spare $50,000 sitting around earning a low rate of interest. But I’d say that their previous promotions for up to $300 have been far better. You can view the bonuses we do recommend by clicking here.
Big thanks to reader, David who let us know. Please consider sharing bank bonuses with this site so we can make it even better.
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I received paper offer which is similar to this expired one, but with better terms. $600 cash bonus to open a Premier Checking account between 9/7/19 and 11/08/19 with any amount, deposit at least $15,000 the same month and maintain a combined average monthly balance of $25,000 in eligible accounts for three months following the the month of the checking account opening. Monthly service charge of $25 waited for the first two statement cycles on new accounts. Waived thereafter with a $25k average monthly combined balance in eligible accounts. Bonus will be credited by 3/31/20.
I sent Will a photo of the offer.
Beware of this bank. They do a hard pull (equifax for me), they are very chex sensitive and will deny if you have a few inquiries. Their service is horrendous, days to get back to you just to tell you its been forwarded. Calling keeps you on hold until you have to leave a message which takes them more than a day to call back.
I opened an investment account with them for the bonus, they are ok but you have to go through the banking group first to get to them which is where the problem is. They denied my checking account (no bonus offer) They didnt say why, but only possible issue would be too many chex inquiries past 3 years. when tried to get clarification, letting them know i already have a relationship with them with an investment over 200k. They refused to provide an answer saying they sent me the response and that all they will do. All their response in writing was it was declined. My 1 year for the investment bonus is up today and I am closing the account. Had 5 issues with them in 1 year, from unable to do online trade becuase their system didn’t work, but they were still insisting i pay the person broker fee(supervisor wouldnt override) to online statements disappearing to no and lond delays to responsed to messages
I didn’t get a HP. I had 6-7 chex inqs in the past yr and it wasn’t a problem. The one time I had to call CS, I spoke immediately with a rep, but I also know that they are currently expecting high volumes (I had to send an SM about something unrelated, and got a message 1.5 days later answering the question and apologizing for the longer-than-usual response time).
Opening the account was a slight pain as they required me to upload photo ID, but no big deal in the grand scheme of things.
As described by this article in this offer during the third month the $50k can be moved out of the BotW checking account and into an interest bearing account. Assuming the 1% APY that $50k will earn about $41 and a $30 fee will be assessed by BotW.
I think it is worth mentioning the value of avoiding a monthly fee versus earning interest. Earned interest is worth less than its face value because of taxes. Tax rates will vary by individual, but assuming a 33% tax rate, that $41 of interest is really worth $27. Leaving the $50k in for the full 90 days may be just as sensible as taking it out after 60 days. Higher tax rates make avoiding the $30 fee option more attractive.
Hi Chuck, the last time these folk had the new account bonus, I am pretty sure that you had the credit pull reported as a Hard pull so I never gave it a second thought, some other negatives have been reported about these folks in the past as well.
They are owned by a big French conglomerate that is struggling to show a profit and will likely be sold off, owner is likely to sell their U.S. asset as reported by American Banker magazine. This is a btw only. Could be a positive.
Watch out for the Hard Pull just in case.
D Traveler