More online banking peeves.
Twice in two months they have misplaced a rather important payment. I got my "termination of service" notice from the electric company yesterday. The other one was even more serious than that, if you can imagine.
If I try to open multiple tabs, so that I can look at my current account status as well as my pending payments, one of the tabs logs me out.
Payments that are supposed to be made today don't show up in the account status (register) view, because the payments haven't been made yet, but they also don't show up in the pending payments page, because that lists future payments only - ie, starting tomorrow. And, of course, yesterday's payments don't show up either place either, because they haven't cleared yet. So, on the second day of the month, when I do most of my bill paying, there's something like $1200 of pending payments that were supposed to be made yesterday or today that are simply missing. I know that it's supposed to be there somewhere, but I can't see it anywhere. This has led to one fairly serious overdrawl so far, and, although I'm aware of it now and am trying to be more careful, I expect that's likely to happen again.
There isn't a real "register" view, listing all checks, past payments, and scheduled payments, like you'd have in a real piece of banking software, so that you can see today's balance, tomorrow's projected balance, and the balance next week after the payments are made. So, really, the only convenience I'm getting from this is the ability to pay bills without writing checks and using stamps. I suppose that's a significant advantage, but it would be much more accurate to call this online billpaying than to call it online banking. What's strange is that the online banking (so called) is free, but the online billpay - the only bit that's actually useful - is an additional fee.
I don't really want to switch banks again so soon, and, from what I hear, everyone's online banking software is pretty terrible, so perhaps it wouldn't be worth it anyway. *sigh*
**Addendum**
Oh, yeah, forgot one. The online banking bit is a completely different company from the bank itself, so I can't call the bank about problems. And the bank never really knows where my money is at any given time. When those payments went missing, I call the bank, and they tell me that there was never a payment. I call the online banking place, and they say that the payment was made. The payee never got it. And yet another company/department - the investigative unit, or something like that - has to go look into it. That's another number that I have to call, and repeat the story yet again. I'm really looking forward to calling about my electric payment today. I suppose that if my electricity gets cut off, you'll notice by the absense of this web site.
Eww... sorry for the trouble!!
We have been using our bank's version for a couple months, and we seem to be very happy with it.
--Moose
Posted by: Moose on April 2, 2004 08:38 AMI think horrible online banking must be a US phenonemon. I live in Canada and have TD Canada Trust as my bank, and if I have any problems, I call my bank and they help me out.
I just logged into my banking website to pay my school, hit the Pay Bills button, hit the check box beside the school name (you can pay several people at once), enter an amount, select a date, confirm, hit okay, I'm done. Go back to my 'View Accounts' page.
The amount I paid my school has been deducted from my balance.
The transaction list includes a payment to my school forward dated to the 5th, to explain how the balance went down. (today is the 3rd)
I can also see that on the 5th I will be receiving a tax refund deposit from the government.
Whatever bank you are using needs to get off their ass and buy the system this one has going, its great, never had any issues, confirmation numbers for all the payments, links to my bank credit card directly so I don't have to wait untill the end of the month to see what charges I have placed.
Very high Usability.
Posted by: Paul Reinheimer on April 3, 2004 04:12 AM