So I fill out their online application, and they say they'll get back to me. Cool. A few days later, I get an email saying that they'll need additional verification because I've been a victim of identity theft in the past. What? I've never had such problems, and I checked with my bank/etc. and they didn't find any problems either.
So they want me to get notarized copies of a bunch of documents- I go do that, which costs me $50+ in fees. I send the documents to them.
A week later, they contact me again- there's no way they can open an account for me, for undisclosed reasons, but I can call their support to learn more. OK, I call their support, and a (very nice) guy tells me that it has to do with me not being a US citizen and my SSN being different in some way (? I've been living here for almost 3 years now, working, being paid, opening bank accounts, etc. without ever having a problem). He apologizes, and that's it.
Of course my $50+ in notary fees are lost.
They've been more problematic to me in 2 weeks without even having an account than all of my banks that I've had accounts with for years combined.
So yeah, so much for "a financial service for people fed up with banks"
Somewhat ironically, you could go to a bank to have this done for free if you happen to be a customer of the bank (and many times, even if you're not). Wells Fargo has free notary services for their customers, as one example, and this is pretty much the only time I actually have had to step into a physical branch.
Cmd-W.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE...
This sent me into a bit of a panic. There is absolutely no reason for me to have any negative reports in ChexSystems, and after pulling the report myself online, I found out there is no negative information at on the report. I relayed this information to the rep I was e-mailing asking if anything could be done, since clearly something had gone wrong. There was nothing he could do.
Five days after talking to the rep, I received a form from Simple in the mail for a ChexSystems report request. It was pre-filled with my name, birth date, current address, and social security number. Everything anyone needs to steal my identity in one convenient place.
I'm fed up with banks, but I'll take a bank over a place that can't open new accounts and mishandles customer information any day. I think it will be a lot less costly in the long run.
I actually look at this number, because the iPhone app loads quickly and only requires a 4 letter passcode after logging in.
I set really agressive goals and when I notice I'm getting down to the wire on "safe to spend" I make a conscious effort not to buy a coffee, or whatever else.
If I saw my real bank balance, I'd shrug and say, "Oh, what's 3 bucks for coffee?"
Overdraft fees? All banks ask you to opt-in. Is that really the thing people are "fed up" with? I find it hard to believe these people have much money, and why Simple would want these idiots.
I have no issues depositing my money quickly, withdrawing my money, and accessing a transaction log. My bank even provides a mobile app to do this. I was asked to opt-in to overdraft, and all the charges were explained very clearly. I bank with Chase.
My bank didn't tell me that in the event the Post Office became confused and stopped delivering my mail (commercial address, only gets the bank stuff), they would make no effort to contact me when the checks and statements started coming back. Though, when they forgot to transfer money into my new accounts they did agree to waive the penalties I had incurred, so that was sort of nice that they didn't pursue a fee which would have lost them a court case.
I think this sentence from the article sums up the motivation…
“Banks make money by keeping customers confused,” Mr. Reich said. “There’s no incentives to make the experience better.”
Your bank no doubt has dozens of different kinds of accounts with various byzantine rules applied to each. Is there a button on your online banking page that says "Recommend the optimum account plans for me."? They know your history, they pretty much know your future. They know their own plans. They have computers… what is stopping them?
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¹ http://www.topclassactions.com/open/2603-chase-overdraft-fee...
1) Banks do have you opt-in for fees, but typically through opaque changes to terms and conditions. When my bank was acquired, I started getting fees for, e.g. using other ATMs. I'm sure they sent me something in regards to this, but who the hell actually reads legalese? Contrast that with simple. When the new year rolled in, they updated their terms and conditions with an email that explained its effects in plain english (in a manner reminiscent of Creative Commons licenses.)
2) Simple has ATMs everywhere since it's part of Allpoint.
3) Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes that equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.
4) From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their behavior afterward deserves repercussions. Simple has an unsullied history.
Say what you will, but I'm happy to give Simple my money given the experience thus far. And clearly others are too.
To be frank with you, Allpoint is pretty shit wherever I've lived. I don't want to have to go to some dilapidated 7-11 to use their ATM. I want to use any ATM I see on the street with no fee. It turns out I could get that with either USAA or, apparently, Charles Schwab.
> Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes that equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.
Can't really comment, except USAA and ING Direct (soon to become Capital One 360) both have perfectly usable web sites, and USAA's web site is even an acceptable Mint, if that's what you want. (Personally, I use spreadsheets.)
> From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their behavior afterward deserves repercussions.
Isn't Simple backended by an institutional bank?
Fees in general are shit. Another example: ATM fees. Decent banks don't charge ATM fees. The best banks not only don't charge ATM fees, but if the ATM itself charges a fee, the bank refunds you the money themselves.
Also shit: minimum balances. Chase waives the minimum balance if you have a direct deposit, except I don't want to direct deposit into my checking account. I want to direct deposit into my savings account to use as a buffer. Then, every month, I can withdraw only that month's budgeted amount into my checking accounts. And since I only withdraw the budgeted amount every month, the balance should be 0 at the end of the month, which is why I don't want to worry about overdrafts.
Maybe your use case is different from mine, but the fact is, all the terms I'm asking for are available on the market already and I don't have time or patience for banks that don't accommodate me when they have competitors who will.
By far, the customer service at the credit union is infinitely better than that of the large bank. I call customer service at the big bank with small issues or questions, and I'm extremely irritated by the time I'm even speaking with a real person after a terrible mix of phone mazes and hold music. My credit union is normally on the phone after 2-3 rings and almost immediately takes care of whatever I need.
I'd much prefer to move everything to the credit union, but I just have certain convenience needs that most bigger banks just handle better due to their larger infrastructure.
I hate my Wells Fargo account but I keep it open so I can deposit money and I can receive account transfers easily from other people. Even with this setup I sometimes find it difficult to get the money where I need it (specifically out of my Wells Fargo account into my regional bank account) without hassle (and fees).
Anyways, the MVP if you will for a bank that I would switch over to would be one that allows me to deposit from anywhere (checks from home, cash from any ATM anywhere that accepts deposits), withdraw from anywhere, and transfer to any other account in a timely fashion.
#1: I have absolutely no business background. Do I need to get an MBA in order to understand how banks work from the back-office, and maybe the legalities? Reading this article, the Simple co-founder apparently had an MBA. I'm a programmer by trade (Java, Android/iOS, a little of web).
#2: Should I consider Simple a competitor or should I think of banking as a very local kind of industry, like e-commerce? I don't want to build just another Simple clone, and considering Simple's success, if they scale up here in southeast Asia, I don't want to be just a copycat.
1. You don’t need an MBA to understand banking. While the importance of regulation and compliance (“legalities”) is paramount, it isn’t something you learn from an MBA program.
2. It depends. Simple isn’t a bank. If you were successfully issued a charter, you could likely surpass Simple, et al. from an innovation and feature perspective. FYI: http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm
EDIT: For added perspective I'm an early twenties recent college grad.
Just the other day I realized that I had a credit card payment due and it was slightly higher than I expected (Holiday Spending) and I went into a minor panic as I was a little frazzled in paying it. I logged into simple and that's when I realized that I created a goal that was my credit card limit. This meant over the past month I had already slowly been paying down the bill without even realizing it. Everyday a small portion of my safe to spend was put into that goal. I made the payment without even "rebudgeting". That was a great feeling. I'm living well within my means but I feel like I have more money than ever. Simple makes it easy to keep yourself in check. I have a few items I plan on purchasing in the near future and I just created a few goals so that when the time comes I'll already have paid for it.
Lastly, the at a glance view of your finances without much ado is GREAT. I have an automatically generated daily average income/spending for the day/week/month/year averaged over various periods. I have graphs that show me how my funds have fluctuated and I'm starting to see some patterns in my spending habits. I've haven't banked like this before and I'm excited to see where else they can help.
Meanwhile the economy has improved, and let's face it, when there's sufficient fund sloshing around in our checking account to make those pesky fees non-issues, the big banks are not that bad.
In addition, many banks have cleaned up their act under pressure from regulators and customers, so now you have much smaller pool of people who are still willing to switch their banks out of spite.
In the end, this was a business that could've taken off and sustained for awhile had their timing and execution been better. After all, once people switch banks, they stick with them.
Where Simple really shines though is in two areas:
1) General non-sucky-ness. It's not a single feature, but rather the quality of the overall experience. The support features makes it really easy to write a textual query right in the regular dashboard or mobile app, and they usually reply within hours. There's no calling robotic phone lines and spending 30min in menus or on hold… The website itself is beautiful and extremely usable. Unlike, say, Bank of America Online, the emotion you feel while navigating simple.com is delight, not frustration and exasperation.
2) Goals and Safe to Spend. When you open either the app or the website, there is a very visible balance amount. The trick is, it is not your actual account balance, but rather what Simple calls your Safe-to-Spend balance. Simple has a goals section, in which you can set up goals you wish to achieve by a certain date, as well as reserved funds (eg. an emergency fund). Simple takes all of that information into account, as well as recurring bills such as rent payments and subtracts it from the money it considers safe to spend.
It's great, it has really had a positive impact on my finances. I've never been good at budgeting, but through the way Simple handles Safe-to-Spend, it has kind of forced me into better consumption patterns.
Last July, I got my invitation to use Simple.com, which I'd been really excited about for over a year. I start signing up, and instantly I'm surprised by how their signup form is both the most visually attractive form I'd ever used on a website, and how it barely worked. I ran into three different bugs just with the initial signup form.
One of the bugs was that it asks what type of smartphone I have. When I selected Android, it said to submit the form, but that they don't have an Android app yet. No problem, I don't care about a mobile app. The problem is that when you selected Android, the form broke and there was no way to submit it. I'd already spent several minutes filling out the form (including giving them info on my other bank account to transfer money into Simple) and I didn't want to lose all my info, so I just said that I had an iPhone so I could continue signing up.
Then I get to the next screen where it says that the only way to continue the signup process is to install the iPhone app. Of course I couldn't do this, so I emailed their support explaining that I'd mistakenly said I have an iPhone because of a bug with their signup form. I get a response back saying that if I don't have an iPhone, there's no way to use Simple, so I'd have to be added to the Android waiting list.
One problem: they'd already taken the money out of my other bank account. I assumed that they hadn't done this because I'd never actually signed up or agreed to their terms or anything like that (you agree to the terms via their app). I actually only know that they transferred money out of my account because a different support person emailed me in November asking why in the world I wasn't using my Simple account. I responded saying that I'd already talked to them about this, and I didn't have an iPhone. That person told me that I didn't need an iPhone and that I could use the service by logging in online. I forwarded her the email from a different Simple support person contradicting what she said, and she just dismissed it (basically saying, "yeah, that's not true") without apologizing or offering an explanation.
So I tried resetting my password online so I could log in, only to run into yet another bug with their software. The password reset feature was completely broken. So I emailed the support person saying that their password reset feature didn't work. She ignored the issue (no apology, no explanation, nothing) and just told me that I don't need an iPhone without explaining how to actually get into the software, or why I was given incorrect information earlier.
That's where we are now. I've been run in circles by their customer service, I've encountered a half dozen different bugs, and that's without even being able to log in! My next step is to call their 800 number, but I'm already completely fed up with the experience and I won't be a customer of theirs regardless of the resolution at this point. I've been frustrated by every bank I've ever dealt with, but none of them have been as bad as Simple so far.
I seriously hope they get these kinks worked out so that other potential customers don't have the experience I've had.
IMO their online banking is pretty cool but the so far their customer service has been worse than every other bank and credit union I've used.
1. My girlfriend really wanted to join too. I sent them a message about this and they sent her an invite that day (this was before invitation were available to current customers).
2. They emailed me to ask why I wasn't using my account. I said I don't have direct deposit because I'm a freelancer, so it didn't make sense for me to use until they had check deposit. They said that makes sense, and a few weeks later they invited me to beta test their check deposit feature.
3. I asked about the possibility of giving goals the ability to withdraw a percentage of check deposited rather than a certain amount every day, since my income is variable. I got a response from someone saying they had just put in a request for that feature, and it should be on the horizon.
4. They've happily answered all sorts of weird questions regarding my particular circumstances, and indulged me more than any customer service people I've ever talked to.
This service is not perfect yet, but every indication I've seen suggests everyone there really wants to do well, and they really are trying to build a customer focused bank. After trying it out for a few months, I'm planning on moving most of my banking to my simple account.
I have my own example of banks in Australia, and they're some of the best I've ever dealt with.
Banks in the US on the other hand...
There's no reason to have an account with a bank in the US when you can have one with a credit union. Unless you're really rich and don't care about fees.
Disclosure - I'm the founder.
I'll be happy to see them win, but I'd rather not be a Guinea pig.
Mint is US only and the closest thing in the UK we have to that is lovemoney, which falls short in many areas. I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with alternatives.
I requested an account almost 10 months back. No response yet. I forgot about your service completely.
