Recently in Banking Category

I got a kick out of this headline on the Globe/boston.com site:

Bank sweetens paying bills online

The reason it made me laugh was because I had the exact opposite reaction to this news when I read it when I logged in to Online Banking earlier this week.

To someone like me, who always teeters on the edge (and often goes right over) of keeping my account balance positive, one of the BEST features of online banking (and previously Homelink) was that the minute the bank sent out the money, it was gone from my account. I never had to think about bouncing checks or waiting on someone to cash a check, or hell, forgetting about a check I had sent out. It was a wonderful thing. The reason? I knew how much money was in my account. It basically made it so that I never had to keep a checkbook again, just keep up to date on online banking. Helped me a ton.

Now, they are going and changing this. In the article, it even says it will be possible to bounce an electronic payment. THAT SUCKS. This means that someone like me has to go BACK to keeping a checkbook register updated even though I NEVER write checks because, due to this change, all my outgoing online bill payments will now act like checks.

The worst case scenario is you send someone an online bill payment and it goes out like a check and they go and HOLD IT for 30 days or 60 days and then SUDDENLY decide to cash it, if I don't have an updated checkbook and am low on funds, I am screwed.

This change really does not make sense to me either. How much interest are people REALLY losing on 2 days or 4 days of money? Unless they have thousands of dollars in the bank and are sending out thousands of dollars in bill payments, this change is hardly going to affect them. And on the opposite side, folks like me who don't have thousands of dollars in their account are going to get screwed regularly becuase they forgot to write something down. This sure smells like a change for the rich.

Also, I can't understand why ANYONE would want to take a steps backwards in to having to keep a checkbook again, once they had gotten used to the instant gratification of Online Banking.

Since the Fleet to Bank of America changeover, Bank of America has done NOTHING but attempt to lose me as a customer. I am done with them and I would love to change banks. Sadly, I have yet to find any sort of viable alternative.

I haven't bitched about Bank of America in a while, so I will again today after a horrible conversation with them.

So, I got paid last Saturday. In going through all my bills, I paid off my credit line. In the past, as soon as you paid off your credit line, the money was available, as it should be, its just passing from one part of your account to another.

Well, with the wonderful new world of Bank of America, transferring from one part of your Bank of America account to another takes 1 business day. So, what happens is they fuck you. I went and paid all the rest of my bills, went food shopping, etc etc, and then when all these things caught up on Monday, they charged me $34 for overdrafting my account. Now, there was plenty of money in my account, but because it was in process of being transferred from one part of my account to the other, they charged me $34. Actually, it looks like they hit me twice for the same night. Fucking idiots.

Well, I finally have the last straw of using Bank of America. Have to deal with one little thing and then I will be closing my account.

So, I'm pretty much fed up with the "Higher Standards" of Bank of America. They fucked me over enough since the switch over that I need to find a new bank. So, my second banking question of the day is, how are the rest? From the top of my head, I figure we have:

• Citizens Bank
• Soveriegn Bank
• TD Banknorth

What do people think of these three? The TD Banknorth totally free checking thing sounds pretty good to me, but they are new to the area, so not sure how they are from any friends experience.

My other option is to open a checking account with the credit union I am in. The only downfall there is that the credit union is down on Long Island.

Thoughts?

Anyone gotten one of these Orange Savings Accounts from ING Direct? It seems like a good deal and getting a savings account started is probably a good idea. Any opinions good or bad?