My mortgage term was up on June 1, so I met with the mortgage specialist/personal banking consultant in May. Since I didn't have any accounts or credit card products with TD and they were offering a slightly higher interest for my mortgage anyway. I told her that I might switch my mortgage to my own bank.

During the conversation with her, I asked very clearly whether there would be fees if I took the mortgage to another bank and she replied NO and added that my bank might charge me fees though. She used her calculator and calculated that TD was only charging about $30 more per year based on that rate.

In June, I got a statement from my bank telling me that TD was charging me $260 of discharge fee. It was really an unpleasant surprise because no fee of any kind was being mentioned or explained during the half- hour meeting.

When I talked to the same lady again today, she said the conversation was not recorded and it was only me and her and so it could not be verified. Then I told her that it just didn't make any sense for me to switch at all had I been told about the $260 of transfer fee and only be able to save $30 of interest a year.

To wrap up her argument, she told me to refer to my agreement I got 5 years ago and read the section regarding charges. So I did, and it stated $200 intead of $260. I went to the bank and they did refund me the $60 difference. However, I was totally diappointed and stressed out by this experience. The bank employees are protected because they can always refer to the numerous fine print somewhere in the agreement and do not need to feel responsible about what they say. Us as consumers on the other hand, are not, especially behind doors when nothing is recorded.

The whole experience had taught me a lesson that never go to the bank without some kind of videotaping or recording device. My boyfriend can totally attest to that as he also had a couple of unpleasant experiences with TD. One was in the same branch at 1140 Johnson Coquitlam BC and the other one was a different branch in Coquitlam. He was trying to get a line of credit after he was laid off. The person filling out the form insisted on puting Self Employed in the Occupation session and trying to click off the computer screen quickly, though my boyfriend had expressed to her that he wasn't comfortable with that.

Another incident with TD was that there was a discrepency between what was being told the interest rate would be for his credit card and what was actually being charged. What was inevitable- the embedded charges. They were trying to charge him critical illness insurance without telling him. When he found out about that, they explained that it was just STANDARD.

Please be cautious when dealing with the bank, my boyfriend and I had our share of experiences.

S.C. Lau