Understanding your Bill from SunTrust Bank

SunTrust offers both banking and credit card options to its customers. However, like most major banking companies, they aren’t usually upfront with extra charges or fees that may apply to your account. We’ve written this guide so that you can understand why you might be charged a certain amount and so you aren’t caught off guard when those charges end up deducting from your account balance. We’ll also explain a bit about the APR rates that SunTrust offers. Let’s get started.

What’s On Your SunTrust Statement

SunTrust is a broad banking and financial services company that provides both credit cards and traditional checking and savings accounts. Their statements tend to be simple and easy to read, but they also include lots of information about extra charges or fees and any waivers that may apply. The charges or fees you might be charged should be broken down with your account total on the left of the page.

What Are the Extra Charges You Might See?

SunTrust charges several common fees based on the type of account (the big three are balanced banking, essential checking, and advantage checking) you own and how much money is within. Let’s break them down one by one:

• Minimum opening deposit: $100. You must pay this for either the balanced banking or essential checking accounts to open them in the first place
• Monthly maintenance fee: $12 for balanced banking and $7 for essential checking. To avoid these fees, you have to have a minimum daily total balance of $3000 or more for balanced banking or a minimum daily balance of $500 for essential checking. You can also complete 10 or more banking transactions per statement cycle for the latter type of account.
• Advantage checking also includes a monthly maintenance fee of $20, with the same basic requirements for waving as balanced banking
• Paper statement fee: $3 for the essential checking account. It is zero dollars for the balanced banking account and beyond
• Students with an essential checking account can enjoy no monthly maintenance fee for up to five years
• Check image statement: $3 per month regardless of account type
• APR for savings accounts: 0.6%. This rate also only applies to balances of $10,000 or more, so it’s not a great bank to begin building up a savings bundle if you don’t have a lot to throw into the account right off the bat
• Credit card APR: 5.5% intro rate for the first three years. Then it climbs to 13.49%-23.49% depending on your creditworthiness and other factors. APR is variable within the first 60 days of the account opening
• Credit card balance transfer fee: $10 or 3% of the amount of the transfer, whichever is more expensive. It’s free for the first 60 days of opening the accouna

How to Contact SunTrust

SunTrust has a frequently asked questions page and a support page rolled into one. They have several telephone numbers you can look into, although their online support option is also fairly responsive. You can also talk by mail as a last resort or if you prefer that style of communication.