Update: this pro­mo­tion expired

Alex­Elder updated his post and gave me per­mis­sion to post his new arti­cle! Thanks Alex

This promo is open to exist­ing and new cus­tomers. i.e. any­one liv­ing in Canada

You must be 19+ years old.

Offer valid May 29 August 4

Offi­cial TD ipod offer page

Brief sum­mary of the promotion.

TD Canada Trust is giv­ing away ipod Shuf­fles (512MB) and ipod Nanos (1GB).

To obtain an Ipod Shuffle

1. Trans­fer over a bank account from another insti­tu­tion using the EasySwitch pro­gram offered by TD Canada Trust.
2. Set up(or have already in place) One of the following:
   1. One Direct Deposit (1 DD). Any exter­nal deposit to the account which is elec­tron­i­cally cred­ited to a customer’s account on a weekly, bi-monthly or on a monthly basis (quar­terly or annual cred­its do not count as reg­u­lar deposits)
   2. Two Pre-Authorized Deb­its (2 PAD’s) This includes auto­matic bill pay­ments reg­is­tered with out­side com­pa­nies as well as TD Mort­gage, Loan, VISA or LOC PADs. Pre-authorized trans­fers or PTS do not qual­ify. This means set­ting up an auto­matic trans­fer from a chq to sav account every month does NOT work.

To obtain an Ipod NANO

You must do part 1 and either part 2.1 or 2.2 from the above Ipod shuf­fle deal.

You must also be approved for a brand new TD Gold Elite or Travel Visa (will be referred to as Gold Visa from now on) and accept it. The Gold Select Visa is not applic­a­ble for this promo. If you want more info on the 2 Visa cards head over here. There is an over­lap­ping promo for the Travel visa as well. You get 7500 bonus start up points.

I will be talk­ing about the nano promo from now on because the shuf­fle promo is pretty straight forward.

KEY INFORMATION FOR GETTING YOUR NANO WITH THE LEAST FEES

1. The Gold Visa has an annual fee of $99/$120. This can be waived by hav­ing a Select Ser­vice account
2. The Select Ser­vice account has a monthly fee of $24.95. This fee can be waived by main­tain­ing a monthly bal­ance of $5000 in the account.
3. If you don’t have $5000 to keep in your Select ser­vice account you will most likely have to pay for 1–2 months of ser­vice fees depend­ing on when you do the work for the promo and how fast you get your DD or PAD’s set up.

The fol­low­ing are step by step instruc­tions on how to get a Nano with the least fees. If you want to pay the fees, it will be around $100 still not bad for a Nano, but nowhere close to Free.

FOR EXISTING TD CUSTOMERS

1. Open a President’s Choice (PC) Finan­cial (or any other chqing account at any bank like CIBC RBC, etc. PC Finan­cial is free so its pre­ferred) you do not need any money in this account.
2. Or you can trans­fer over an account you already have open that you don’t really need.
3. tell a TD finan­cial rep(not a teller) you want to take advan­tage of the Nano promo
4. pro­vide them with your PC Finan­cial account number(not bank card num­ber) so they can start the trans­fer process over to your TD account
5. You will be asked for a day when you want the easyswitch dept to call you. Pick a time when you will have about 10–20 mins free to be on the phone.
6. Apply for your Gold Visa (If you are not approved then you wont be able to get the Nano, but there is a pos­si­ble way around this if you have $5000. Leave a com­ment below if you want more details about this issue.
7. When you are approved(either on the spot or in a day or two after the appli­ca­tion is started by the rep) Upgrade your TD account to the Select Ser­vice account so you don’t get the Gold Visa annual fee.
8. Deposit $5000 if you want to get around the Select ser­vice fee(24.95 a month dur­ing the time you are wait­ing for the nano).
9. Set up your 1 DD or 2 PAD’s. These can already be exist­ing in your account. So if you have your Pay­roll going into your TD account you already got this step done. You can use the Visa you are get­ting for one PAD as well. So you really only need 1 DD or 1 PAD for the Nano promo. You can set up the VISA PAD at the TD bank, the other PAD you can sim­ply do your­self by obtain­ing a direct deposit/PAD form from the rep. and pro­vide that to your work/billing company.

No you will need to have some info with you for the EasySwitch call.

You will need your PC account# and your TD account num­ber handy. Also, it would help if you knew when you opened the PC account.

After the call is done you are in the home stretch. All you have to do is wait for your Nano. TD will not inform you that you have qual­i­fied, but your account will be flagged. If you want you can ask a TD rep if your account is flagged about 2 weeks after you do the call. Your DD or PAD’s do not actu­ally have to go through, they just need to be reg­is­tered to your account. They get reg­is­tered once your work/billing com­pany put the work through so I can’t guar­an­tee a time­line on this.

Once you receive your Nano you can downgrade/close your Gold Visa, then downgrade/close your Select ser­vice account. Make sure you do it in that order because the Select Ser­vice account needs to be there while your Gold Visa is an Annual fee one.

If the Select ser­vice account you have is a brand new account then do not close it right­way, down­grade it first. Then close it after 90days are up.

The PC Finan­cial account will get 2 charges due to the EasySwitch. A bal­ance of account transfer(BOAT) fee and an early clos­ing fee. These both will be taken care of by the easyswitch. If easyswitch does not cover them your PC account will just not be trans­ferred over. How­ever, because you already went through with the easyswitch work, that still qual­i­fies you for the Nano. This actu­ally hap­pened to a few peo­ple dur­ing last year’s promo.

FOR NON EXISTING TD CUSTOMERS

You will be doing all of the above, but instead of using an exist­ing TD account you will have to open a new TD account.

Here is my quick FAQ.

Q: Do ING, ICICI or any other non tra­di­tional bank sav­ings accounts work?
A: No, they do not, but dur­ing last years pro­mo­tion peo­ple were able to trans­fer over tra­di­tional bank sav­ings accounts like BMO, CIBC, RBC etc…

Q: Do GST chqs count as Direct Deposits?
A: No, they must be monthly DD’s. So Child tax ben­e­fit, pen­sion, EI etc… those would count.

Q: I already have a DD’s going into my account, can I use that?
A: Yes, please read the top part of the post. Basi­cally any­thing exist­ing can be used except for the Gold Visa

Q: Can I use a DD’s that’s on my RBC account?
A: Yes you would have to obtain a Direct Deposit form from your TD Rep and pro­vide it to your com­pany. The same goes for PAD’s.

Q: Can I get the Nano if I got the Shuf­fle dur­ing last year’s promo?
A: yes you can. If a rep says you can’t go to another branch, they might not know much about the promo.

Q: Can I get a Nano and a shuf­fle this year?
A: No, the Nano is an upgrade to the Shuf­fle if you get a Gold Visa.

Q: Is it really worth all the trou­ble?
A: That is up to per­sonal opin­ion. But I think it is. This promo involves you going to two banks. Both trips com­bined should take about 30 mins. Then your easyswitch call which takes about 10–20 mins. So that’s rounded up 1 hr for over $150 value.

Q: I still have a ques­tion
A: Please leave a com­ment and I’ll ask Alex­Elder to kindly help answer your questions.

Good Luck every­one. Enjoy your nano/shuffle if you choose to take advan­tage of the promo.

PS: Here are a few other ben­e­fits of this promo
You will get 7500 bonus Travel points if you sign up for a travel Visa worth $112.50.
You will have unlim­ited trans­ac­tions while you are wait­ing for your NANO due to the select account.
Free cer­ti­fied chqs and free bank drafts/money orders
You can order free chqs
You can get a free bor­der­less USD account that gets you a slightly bet­ter exchange rate