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.