Savings & Loans Visa

Bad – The value of this product has slowly but surely eroded over the years. S&L used to be fee free banking but this is now not possible for most customers in their normal usage patterns anymore. The only way to not have no fees is to meet stringent criteria (e.g. have a personal loan and insurance through S&L, etc.) and to not have a VISA card. Even then you will have a limited amount of free transactions. S&L has continually expanded their services to the detriment of their current membership base (i.e. fees have gone up - not down). Their $30 and $15 dishonour fees are exorbitant. There are now plenty of other banks and credit unions that don't charge any of these fees. Large amount of rediATMs available make finding an ATM easy. Good internet client. $2 a month fee per Visa Debit card. Double fees for using non-rediATM - $0.25 from S&L plus whatever the other institution charges. Use of rediATM is not necessarily free of charge depending on what type of account you have they can cost $1.00 per transaction but you have from 0 to 4 transactions free (some account types are unlimited free). $0.25 fee for each BPAY transaction. $30 direct debit dishonour fee. $15 internal debit dishonour fee. Limited amount of free EFTPOS transactions (from 0 to 8 depending on what account type you qualify for). For all accounts the amount of "free" transactions is limited and shared - so a regular Member gets $4 of free transactions a month to share between EFTPOS, rediATM and Direct Debit usage. Direct Debit costs $1.00 per transaction. Phone support service is not very good. Too much paper wasted sending client letters that could be delivered via email or the internet client.

Excellent – I originally got this card as a student because of increasing pressure to purchase using a credit card. Of course as a student it was impossible to get a credit card so I ended up with a Visa debit card instead. Since then, I've used this card in Europe, Asia and USA and never had any problems. When overseas, a small $4 fee applies for a cash withdrawl but no fees apply to credit transactions. Exchange rate was also reasonable.

No fees also apply to everyday credit transactions but be wary of cash withdrawls. If you go over a certain limit per month they will sting you.

I also added a $1000 overdraft (you can get higher limits too) to the card for those odd occasions (like Xmas) where I may overspend. The interest rate on that is pretty low as well. (Generally) no fees. Convenience. The usual fees for using non S&L atms and withdrawing cash apply.