Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Does it Suck 4U?
If you've had an ING Direct sucking experience please leave a comment or email me at kmslogic@gmail.com and I will add a post to this blog with YOUR story... Hurry before the robots get me.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
My Lawsuit, It Has a Flavor (and the flavor is Class Action)
With as badly as ING Direct handled the NetBank customers, and with as huge the number of NetBank customers is I am surprised that so far I haven't been able to find a class action lawsuit against them.
What laws did they break? Well besides the THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS (see prev. post) where they, through inaction, let a human being come to harm, they also purchased a million checking accounts and converted them to NON checking accounts. Who APPROVED that deal? I mean come on. The FDIC could have just written checks for the account balances of the NetBank customers which would have given a lot of us a heads up that "Hey it's time to go find another checking account..." which is a lot better than finding out little by little that they aren't providing the BASIC FEATURES required to use an Electric Orange account as one's sole account and then, just as you are about to reach the epiphany that you should start looking for some other financial provider, they pull the rug out from under you and say "Oh you have a bunch of bills that need to be paid, well better fill the CAR UP WITH GAS and start paying them IN CASH"...
And then they start laughing... that thin robotic laugh of theirs... how can we help you save today... how can we help you save today... how can we help you save today
What laws did they break? Well besides the THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS (see prev. post) where they, through inaction, let a human being come to harm, they also purchased a million checking accounts and converted them to NON checking accounts. Who APPROVED that deal? I mean come on. The FDIC could have just written checks for the account balances of the NetBank customers which would have given a lot of us a heads up that "Hey it's time to go find another checking account..." which is a lot better than finding out little by little that they aren't providing the BASIC FEATURES required to use an Electric Orange account as one's sole account and then, just as you are about to reach the epiphany that you should start looking for some other financial provider, they pull the rug out from under you and say "Oh you have a bunch of bills that need to be paid, well better fill the CAR UP WITH GAS and start paying them IN CASH"...
And then they start laughing... that thin robotic laugh of theirs... how can we help you save today... how can we help you save today... how can we help you save today
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Issue #3 ING Direct is Managed by Evil Robots
While they appear to be friendly on the outside, the customer support "people" at ING Direct do little more than regurgitate a previously coded set of instructions, obeying their programming blindly and unable to make human decisions.
When I described my situation to them, that
1. The NSF charges were being made invisibly to me from both ends, meaning that they are not included on ING Direct's online transaction reports that I can access on their website and that I did not explicitly authorize the charges. (The idea that an electronic charge bouncing is a severe enough issue to have your account closed implies to me that they should be notifying the customers LOUDLY and REPEATEDLY on their online transaction lists that the charges are going through so they can take action--I am CERTAIN I am not the only one who has had this issue with them)
2. That ING Direct only contacted me one time via Mail and only as a notification (and 3+ months ago). This is not the action of a company that wants to help its customers avoid a pitfall that it MUST know about from other people having similar experiences. Not one phone call was made from them to me.
3. That I was not an original ING Direct customer (they purchased my checking account from NetBank and then didn't provide the functionality I had at NetBank). Oh by the way, this also includes the inability to WRITE CHECKS. Yes you cannot write a check from your own checkbook with an Electric Orange account--you can send an electronic deposit to someone, you can have them use a "bill pay" like feature to have a printed check mailed to someone, but you cannot, for example, give the paperboy a check or send one in a Christmas card to your niece--and I mean you can't do it NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU LOVE HER.
All they were able to respond with was the precoded "there's nothing we can do" instructions the giant evil computer overlords programmed their robotic frames with. As if closing a checking account was as final as one shot to the head and two shots to the chest.*
* I understand from various TV programs that this is "execution style" although I've never actually witnessed or participated in an execution.
If you have only one checking account, losing it suddenly while money is on the way in can feel pretty bad though.
When I described my situation to them, that
1. The NSF charges were being made invisibly to me from both ends, meaning that they are not included on ING Direct's online transaction reports that I can access on their website and that I did not explicitly authorize the charges. (The idea that an electronic charge bouncing is a severe enough issue to have your account closed implies to me that they should be notifying the customers LOUDLY and REPEATEDLY on their online transaction lists that the charges are going through so they can take action--I am CERTAIN I am not the only one who has had this issue with them)
2. That ING Direct only contacted me one time via Mail and only as a notification (and 3+ months ago). This is not the action of a company that wants to help its customers avoid a pitfall that it MUST know about from other people having similar experiences. Not one phone call was made from them to me.
3. That I was not an original ING Direct customer (they purchased my checking account from NetBank and then didn't provide the functionality I had at NetBank). Oh by the way, this also includes the inability to WRITE CHECKS. Yes you cannot write a check from your own checkbook with an Electric Orange account--you can send an electronic deposit to someone, you can have them use a "bill pay" like feature to have a printed check mailed to someone, but you cannot, for example, give the paperboy a check or send one in a Christmas card to your niece--and I mean you can't do it NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU LOVE HER.
All they were able to respond with was the precoded "there's nothing we can do" instructions the giant evil computer overlords programmed their robotic frames with. As if closing a checking account was as final as one shot to the head and two shots to the chest.*
* I understand from various TV programs that this is "execution style" although I've never actually witnessed or participated in an execution.
If you have only one checking account, losing it suddenly while money is on the way in can feel pretty bad though.
Issue #2: No notification when items are returned NSF(!!!)
At ING Direct, if they are unable to pay an item they simply reject it. They do not charge a fee to you (that's a great thing) but they don't provide any notice that someone or something tried to make a charge against your account anywhere on your account web site (that's a bad thing) and every time it happens they get ANGRIER and ANGRIER (that turns out to be the worst thing).
In my case one item was bounced this way from a repeating electronic withdrawal I had set up on my NetBank account. I had not authorized this entity to my new account but the accounts were in transition and ING Direct was honoring NetBank electronic transactions. That is fine.
I received a letter mail a week or two later sayng that NSF charge(s) had happened (which is how I knew this happened) but did not provide specific details about what the item was, who sent it, etc. I happened to know the electronic item in question and why it bounced so I read the letter (which by the way did not request any action except to quit bouncing charges) and knew that the issue would disappear when the account separated fully from its NetBank counterpart.
Well as you can probably guess, this charge continued (I am finding out now, at the end of May 2008) all through the first months of the year. Each time getting rejected and each time making them agrier and angrier. Not angry enough to put something in my online transaction history that said ELECTRONIC DEBIT FAILED NSF with who /what / how much information, but angry enough apparently to stew on it. They also weren't angry enough to send me any more mail telling me about these new NSFs.
Eventually, on May 28, I tried to sign into my account and it asked me to call customer support. After they told me what was going on I explained what seemed to be happening and was told that there was nothing I could do to reopen my account. I spoke to a manager, layed everything out again and received the same response. I think it was a manager it may have been a very angry robot.
In my case one item was bounced this way from a repeating electronic withdrawal I had set up on my NetBank account. I had not authorized this entity to my new account but the accounts were in transition and ING Direct was honoring NetBank electronic transactions. That is fine.
I received a letter mail a week or two later sayng that NSF charge(s) had happened (which is how I knew this happened) but did not provide specific details about what the item was, who sent it, etc. I happened to know the electronic item in question and why it bounced so I read the letter (which by the way did not request any action except to quit bouncing charges) and knew that the issue would disappear when the account separated fully from its NetBank counterpart.
Well as you can probably guess, this charge continued (I am finding out now, at the end of May 2008) all through the first months of the year. Each time getting rejected and each time making them agrier and angrier. Not angry enough to put something in my online transaction history that said ELECTRONIC DEBIT FAILED NSF with who /what / how much information, but angry enough apparently to stew on it. They also weren't angry enough to send me any more mail telling me about these new NSFs.
Eventually, on May 28, I tried to sign into my account and it asked me to call customer support. After they told me what was going on I explained what seemed to be happening and was told that there was nothing I could do to reopen my account. I spoke to a manager, layed everything out again and received the same response. I think it was a manager it may have been a very angry robot.
Issue #1, No Money from Outside the Country!
Issue #1: ING Direct will not accept checks or wire transfers from out of the country.
Pretty much every 'regular' bank will accept these. Money is money after all. I receive a good percentage of my income from affiliate payments that arrive from places like England and Canada (and not places like Iraq or Lebanon). When the accounts transitioned there was no warning about this banking difference and, in fact, no clear documentation about the numerous differences between an ING Direct Electric Orange account and a regular checking account.
Worse than this, the initial payments from out of the country did eventually get into my account, so at first there was no indication there was a problem. Weeks later I received a letter that said that they didn't accept wire transfers or checks from abroad. Whaaaa?
Because of the delays and eventual non-posting of these payments a repeating electronic withdrawal did not complete. This is important for Issue #2.
Pretty much every 'regular' bank will accept these. Money is money after all. I receive a good percentage of my income from affiliate payments that arrive from places like England and Canada (and not places like Iraq or Lebanon). When the accounts transitioned there was no warning about this banking difference and, in fact, no clear documentation about the numerous differences between an ING Direct Electric Orange account and a regular checking account.
Worse than this, the initial payments from out of the country did eventually get into my account, so at first there was no indication there was a problem. Weeks later I received a letter that said that they didn't accept wire transfers or checks from abroad. Whaaaa?
Because of the delays and eventual non-posting of these payments a repeating electronic withdrawal did not complete. This is important for Issue #2.
My ING Direct Story
Late last year my bank, NetBank, went bankrupt and was purchased by ING Direct (all accounts were transferred over from their NetBank counterparts). I was nervous about this transition at first but heard many good things about ING Direct online. It turns out that ING Direct may be a decent choice for folks who specifically seek it out, but it is not a full featured checking account and the feds should not have allowed them to purchase full featured checking account customers. My experience with them ended with my ING direct account being closed against my will (with at least one electronic deposit inbound to them) and a severe fracking of my finances since I've been with them.
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