The first was that they didn’t offer paper checks. I could send a check through the website, but it takes a week to reach the recipient. If I had to write a check, it meant waiting 3 days to transfer money from ING to Bank of America, and then writing the check. It made it impossible to write checks the same day it was annoying for the people I owed money to.
The second one was the hassle of depositing checks with them. I have no interest in mailing in paper checks so that they can cash them. My process now is to deposit a check to Bank of America, and when it clears, transfer that money to my ING account. Quite a hassle.
As a result of these two inconviences, I’ve had more in the Bank of America account (earning 0% interest) than I wanted. I kept a nice $1,000 buffer in case I needed to write a check, and that pissed me off.
Well, ING has grown up now and is starting to offer paper checks! For $5, you can get 50 checks, which is much cheaper than what I’ve seen elsewhere (for comparison, Bank of America offers 150 checks for $21 plus taxes and shipping). Gotta love that.
Now I am able to liquidate my Bank of America account and use ING as my true primary account now!
The only downside to ING right now is the check depositing process. Their twitter account hinted at having a new way to deposit checks by July 4th, but clearly that deadline has passed. Hopefully they’ll come out with this new feature soon, that would really be the icing on the cake!
As if this all wasn’t enough, there’s even better news. ING Direct is now offering a $50 bonus for new accounts. $50 to sign up with a great bank that also offers great interest rates? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
*Props to PTMoney for his post about ING Direct changes, he’s always a step ahead of the game.
But didn’t you know that Capital One is buying the US ING Direct? Apparently a European anti-trust ruling or something. Don’t count on ING being too cool for too long!
Reply
I’m considering leaving ING Direct now that Capital One is taking over the business. “Direct” will be a small piece of CO’s product line, and it will be tempting for CO to try to meld “Direct” into existing CO business. The end result will likely be to kill the very things most of us like about “Direct”. (For example, how many of us think that switching to CO’s ATM network will be a net plus for areas not served by CO branches?)
Reply
Daniel Reply:
August 15th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
@Chris, I’m going to wait and see, if things fall apart, Ally is another great option with similar features and interest rats. Changes likely won’t come for a few years anyway.
Reply