The question is why call it an online business when every sign-up request has to go through a manual evaluative process?
I requested an account almost 10 months back. No response yet. I forgot about your service completely.
A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#32I've been exploring the idea of starting up a bank. The big banks here in my country are so inefficient and I'm hoping to simply make a better banking experience for consumers, hopefully via their mobile phones. Can somebody shed some light on a few questions I have? #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 legaliti…
Banking is definitely a very local industry, because the regulations vary widely by country.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#33What are people "fed up" with exactly? 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 a…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
I was waiting for someone to say something like this. After the 2008 debacle, I went credit union. My wife has Wells and while she likes them, there's all kinds of account fees hand waving for things she was supposed to get for free when she signed up. Banks suck.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#34It figures that the guy who started this is Australian. Australia has some of the worst banks in the world in terms of customer service. Last week I was in a bank (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) with my wife attempting to negotiate a better deal in terms of her account fees, which I believe are exorbitant at approx $10 per month for a basic savings account w/online banking. She'd been with them for 25+ years and had…
Try NAB. I used them while in Australia and I was very happy with them.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#35How is this better than a credit union?
It's not. Credit Unions are the real alternative to banks.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#36I tried opening an account with Simple, as I heard all the buzz around the company and it seemed like they had a nice mobile app. A friend got me an invite to their service (it's invite only right now). 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…
I had a similar issue when I applied after waiting for a year. The rep I talked too indicated that a ChexSystems report was the reason used by their "bank partner" to reject my application.
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.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#37I tried signing up for Simple, and the entire experience was pretty terrible. I realize that they're a new company trying to tackle a big problem so I wanted to cut them some slack, but the ways in which they messed up are hard to forgive. 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 b…
I've had a similar experience with their support. They asked me why I wasn't using the account and I mentioned no ATMs near me and no Android app and they directed me to the web site and didn't address the ATM issue.
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.
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#38oddly enough they declined my application due to "negative" or "closed" bank accounts. I have been a member of federal credit unions, big banks, have a job and credit cards yet they also denied me. super weird!
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#39I tried opening an account with Simple, as I heard all the buzz around the company and it seemed like they had a nice mobile app. A friend got me an invite to their service (it's invite only right now). 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…
I got an invite, went to the sign up page and then found out that I have to have an iPhone to use it. Cmd-W.
The funny thing is the linked article shows an Android screenshot. But from googling around, it looks like no such app has been released yet.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE...
Re: A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks
#40The company missed a valuable window of opportunity to gain a lot of traction when there was strong anti-bank sentiment. People anxiously waited for invites that took too long to come, and when they finally did, there were problems.
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.