141–150 of 166 posts
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Notice how even when they screwed up, they were still bailed out. Obviously I'm not thrilled that any bank would screw up in the first place, but no one's bailing out BankSimple if they do too.
Banksimple also won't sell subprime mortgages
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That's why I'll be using it first, and lots of my fellow college students who have a lot less to use and a lot more to gain from using a bank like BankSimple. Time is in short supply, and fees eat away at my little pool of cash. I'm willing to take the risk, and willing to put my money in the hands of people who are young, smart and innovative, instead of bureaucratic, slow and set in their ways. Not only that, but i…
ING Direct (ingdirect.com) is an amazing online-only bank that has virtually no fees. They've got amazing customer service. And they have the best bank web user interface I've ever dealt with. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct somehow. edit: Why the downvotes? I use ING Direct as my main bank. I love it. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct to win me over. ed…
This is going to be interesting. Sucky banking services are largely an American phenomenon. My bank in Norway has no physical offices and conducts all of its services over the internet, phone or mail. There are (practically) no fees and the interest rates on its savings/checking accounts (there are interchangable, since there are no fees) are within 0.2% p.a. from the best that can be obtained anywhere in the country…
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IMO, the response was right on the money (no pun intended). My first thought when I read maxklein's comment was that he is perhaps saying it half in jest. But in case he was serious, I don't think one can just deride a person/organization based on stereotypes. (Hey you programmer of some web application, what do you know about banking, where's your suit and your MBA, you'll do a shoddy job for sure ... etc) Let's see…
Being sarcastic or dismissive of concerns isn't the way to deal with that type of criticism which was my point. Not that maxkleins criticism was valid or well based that said however, saying "yeah look how the existing banks" have done doesn't tell us anything about how you plan to better that and doesn't really say much at all since for the most part and most of the time the traditional banks do really well. He didn…
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IMO, the response was right on the money (no pun intended). My first thought when I read maxklein's comment was that he is perhaps saying it half in jest. But in case he was serious, I don't think one can just deride a person/organization based on stereotypes. (Hey you programmer of some web application, what do you know about banking, where's your suit and your MBA, you'll do a shoddy job for sure ... etc) Let's see…
Being sarcastic or dismissive of concerns isn't the way to deal with that type of criticism which was my point. Not that maxkleins criticism was valid or well based that said however, saying "yeah look how the existing banks" have done doesn't tell us anything about how you plan to better that and doesn't really say much at all since for the most part and most of the time the traditional banks do really well. He didn…
Yeah, I would also be eager to see more information on their plans. I hope they would start talking more about them on their blog. I am sure they could get some good inputs if they can get a good community going. (It could be one place where his programming/OSS experience might come in handy.)
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>> "Banking does suck." FWIW, This may be true in the US, but certainly isn't a worldwide phenomenon. For example, UK banks pretty much work really well. Seeing US banking in comparison is like using a time machine to go back to the 1950s.
UK Banks, hahaha. Don't make me laugh. While it is great to have a bank that actually pays interest, they have only just started to move away from signatures for all transactions, and towards pins. Plus, they have required huge bailouts as well, I think the RBS is now 70% owned by the government. Australian banks are actually ones that have come out very well, limiting there exposure to toxic assets, no gov bailouts.…
If by "only just" you mean around 5 years ago.
US banks still haven't moved to chip and PIN.
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My mother-in-law thinks that shopping online is crazy because she thinks people can steal her credit card number from over the wires too easily and because you don't know if you're using a "real" shop.
She is correct. It is a real skill to be able to detect the dodgy websites from the real ones. There are lots of fake ebays out there as well. Sure, you and I can tell from the domain name, lack of SSL cert, spelling mistakes, or such, but so many people can not. Your mother in law sounds smart enough to realise that she can not tell the difference. A rare commodity these days.
Just because your card is in your physical proximation, doesn't mean it's safe.
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Well, we must be living in a different UK then. I would be actually willing to pay a monthly fee for a bank account at a bank that has a call centre with staff who actually speak English.
Barclays is pretty good, but all the in branch staff are good. All call centers suck, and all telephone support sucks IMHO. I certainly wouldn't pay extra just to get telephone support. How often do you need it? If you need it a lot, then that's a really really niche use case. It may be due to the Barclays online banking being pretty solid. HSBC is also fairly good.
I'm sorry, but I want my bankers to be grave old men in suits. I also want my bank to have offices all over the world and I want to know that they are handling money many hundreds of times larger than whatever I have. I don't want a bank started by a guy called al3x, and who just left twitter. It sounds innovative, but it doesn't sound...dependable. And if there is one feature I want my bank to have, it's dependable.
Banksimple is only trying to achieve what no other bank thus far has, which is to be genuinely liked by its customers.
Everyone seems to be incredibly worried about the dependability of these guys, yet I don't really see what's so 'dangerous' about this situation. All the deposits are FDIC insured, they clearly have their model laid out; interest margins (and interchange fees) have kept banks running for years, and those are banks with likely 50% more operational costs due to running actual branches.
It's obvious that opening this sort of bank and not selling high-interest rate loans and not charging fees for everything isn't as profitable as it could be if they did, but is it that far fetched that these guys will gladly make less money, but in exchange offer you service that you can actually enjoy?
Zappos could easily save millions every year by shipping UPS ground for everyone, charging for shipping and cutting back on it's customer service, but then it wouldn't be zappos. I, for one, am entirely happy to see a bank that actually took the time to speak with me personally, and offer a banking experience completely unlike what I've had to deal with as long as I have been banking.