Opening a Gemeinschaftskonten

Hi,
I was working in Germany for 18 months for a company back home so was getting paid into a bank account at home. Girlfriend is German and was finishing up in college this summer so I decided to make the move permanent and moved over to a job here last month. We decided to open a joint bank account to handle all our bills. We applied to the comdirect.de a/c, which would be free. However they have refused our application for internal reasons and won't give any explanation! I even rang them and they wouldn't say why, they just said that one of the reasons people get refused is because they have debts! I do have a small loan at home which I took out to pay for a deposit on a new apt here and some furniture, surely this can't be the reason??

So does anyone know of a good online Gemeinschaftskonten that is free or very cheap?

I still haven't opened my own a/c here yet, waiting to hear back from my application this week. Hopefully DKB are more reasonable!

which bank? I have one with my fiance with postbank which is up and running well but was a pain in the ass to set up. We got all the right papers and had them signed at the bank but then they wrote back saying they needed extra info from me which I sent straight away. 8 weeks and we heard nothing so my fiance rang. Nobody could answer him so a few days later, he rang again, nobody could help. He did it a third time and finally we got a letter saying our documents were unauffindbar and we had to do it all over again. Had to go back to the postbank to get my ID checked and was asked for my residence permit which I dont need coz Im from the EU. The thick woman behind the counter didnt believe me that the UK was in the EU an had to check with colleagues. I got no apology so I wrote a really nasty letter german style complaining. Within three days we had our account. So complain, complain, complain and everything will get done

Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB) Cash-konto is online and free (charges for cash withdrawals at any other banks machines with EC-card, which is a bit of a bummer since there's not any DKB ATMs except in their branches, but not with the (free) visa card, and you also get a decent (for Germany) rate of interest on any positive balance on the visa so you can use that as a savings account with instant access to the money from cash-points), and you can open them joint. Only barrier is you need a monthly net income of €1300 for single account or (I think) €2500 combined for a joint account, which shouldn't be a problem if you're both working. They also have a few branches scattered around.

http://www.dkb.de is the internetseite.

Doesn't your girlfriend have an account yet which you just could join in?

I've been trying to open the joint a/c with comdirect. Will send another application and if that fails will look at Postbank. Unfortunately comdirect are only online and you cannot go in and argue with them! What are the fees like with Postbank?

I have applied for my own account with DKB, still haven't heard from them, not sure if that's good or bad but I'm taking is as good. comdirect sent us a letter within 3 days saying we were refused. My girlfriend is finishing off college at the moment so is not working, so we don't qualify for the joint a/c with DKB.

At the moment I'm having to do all my dealing through my girlfriends a/c. Salary is getting paid into it. Very messy. I've no access to her account so I'm using my credit card from back home but it's ridiculous here, 80% of shops don't take credit card

I might not understand everything right, sorry :$ , but: So she has an own account at a bank already? She has to tell the bank to give you a "Vollmacht" to her account, then you'll get access and an own card without a problem.

You should have no problems getting a joint account at the Sparkasse. They are online too.

I could ask for a vollmacht to her account, but it's just a student account. Not sure if that would work. I'll give DKB a until tomorrow for a response and get back to them.