Chase sent out notice in their recent statements that they are discontinuing the free or discounted safe deposit box benefit for Premier and Sapphire checking customers.
They’ve already stopped renting out safe deposit boxes since end of 2021, and now they are removing the discounts that some existing customers have on the boxes for when their box renews.
“If you have a Safe Deposit Box, we’ll no longer offer discounted or free annual rent for Chase Premier Checking , Chase Premier Plus Checking and Chase Sapphire Checking accounts. The annual renewal notice you receive after June 12, 2022, will list your new annual rent. Until then, you’ll continue to receive your existing discount. As a reminder, we currently do not rent new Safe Deposit Boxes.”
Hat tip to reader Panda
I have a Premier Plus Checking account so my safe deposit box usually gets waived. This year I was charged and the fee was deducted from my checking account. When I emailed Chase, they said I had to resolve the issue at the branch level. When I visited the branch, they confirmed that Chase is no longer waiving the box fees. Boxes are also no longer available to new customers, but current box holders are grandfathered in (…this is nationwide). They also confirmed that I should have received an email and a letter confirming this matter (which I have not). I emailed Chase again, and they reiterated they cannot do anything, and it must be handled at a branch level. The annual fee of $70 is not a big deal, but the lack of communication, lack of taking any responsibility is alarming.
It was printed on the April 2022 statement. If you get e-statements you probably just look at the transactions on the web site and never look at the statements. I tend to download them annually for records retention but a lot of people don’t look at them.
Same thing already happened at Allstate, close offices and more unemployed employees.
I opened my Chase checking account in Chicago. Got a bonus, no fees for being a vet and usage of a free safe deposit box. Chase now has branches locally, St. Louis area. But there are no safe deposit boxes at any branches. At U.S. Bank, the annual fee keeps going up and I had to move the box contends to another branch.
I cant think of anything that I would need to save. All my health info is in the cloud, as is all my insurance. My passport travels with me when I travel. My Drivers License and CC are always with me. Any academic info is not needed anymore and is saved by where I got my degrees and would need to be verified by them anyway, same with professional licenses. There is literally nothing that cant get replaced. When I move I move with two suit cases and its clothing or shoes and my laptop.
Oh hi, naïveté—good to see you again. Lol. Good luck with that strategy in the long-run, buddy.
we own collections among other things that are not nft but also valuable with high liquidity.
Yeah great, if you’re poor and don’t have assets or information you want other people to have it’s fine. I have documents on trusts and estate documents, cryptowallet information etched in metal and some gold stored. You really don’t want your information stored on the cloud, and placing it in a secured physical location allows your heirs to access that with great certainty. Physical (notarized) trust documents ensure your heirs can find information on all your accounts, in a way a password you emailed to your spouse years ago to a now-defunct cloud server will not.
There is a need for external secure storage, though. There are some private vault companies but the cost is high and the FBI can just decide to seize the property and hold it hostage for months while they make you prove your innocence or a lawyer files a class action. https://ij.org/federal-judge-deals-another-blow-to-fbi-in-u-s-private-vaults-raid/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html
I spoke to a bank manager at chase today in NYC ,who mentioned that many chase branches maybe removing safe deposit boxes permanently soon. This is not confirmed of course .
Not a cost effective service for the bank
Sorry but how? They have a ton of boxes, and I really doubt there was just an overflow of customers with Sapphire Checking accounts taking up all of their safe deposit boxes. This is just penny pinching garbage.
I think banks are re-evaluating physical locations generally and are looking to close quite a few. With so much banking handled online and by ATMs maintaining physical locations becomes an increasingly expensive proposition for fewer and fewer services. Maintaining a dusty old building and paying $100-$200 an hour for security and teller wages to sit around waiting for someone to access their box just doesn’t make sense, especially in modest net-worth areas.
Removing the benefits are the first step towards phasing out these boxes.
Practices may vary, but at my CU when I go visit my safe deposit box, someone stands there while I’m working with my box contents. Not looking over my shoulder, but waiting in the vault. Even if I’m quick about it, that’s 15-20 minutes of staff time that could be used for something else.
I believe Bank of America still offers a free small box for customers with Platinum Honors tier in Preferred Rewards.
Yes, they do.
It’s better to buy a good quality fire safe and keep the items at your residence because you may not be able to access your safe deposit box if the SHTF.
Ideally I’d still like to store a separate set of documents at a different location. I know someone that lost their driver’s license/wallet on vacation only to come home to a break-in that stole their birth cert, SSN card, and passport. It was absolute hell to try to replace all that without any ID left.
I keep a copy at a relatives house
One of the best pieces of advice I can also share if anyone goes this route is to make sure your fire safe is also water safe. It’s actually very surprising how many are not. Because if your home ever does go up in flames, then the firefighters show up, guess what happens to your safe next…
I have tested 2 of the SentrySafe H0100 cases for over a year. They are fireproof and waterproof (for a reasonable amount of time). I store these cases inside of my heavy fire safes. The documents are still in perfect condition. There is no condensation whatsoever. I put bags of silica gel desiccant beads in the safes to keep them dry. You can buy approx. 5-6lbs of desiccant on eBay or Amazon for about $30, but you may be able to find a better deal somewhere else, idk.
I have a big pile of small packs of silica gel from many things I have bought throughout years. They work fine as well and I spread them around the safe.
There are different uses for each, but yes, thinking about what you want where is worthwhile. Trust documents if you drop dead are probably not bad for a bank, especially since heirs will be clearing out your accounts as is. A passport or something critical is not a great thing to park at a bank.