Emigrant Direct – external transfers are here

Looking at my newly opened Emigrant Direct account, I saw that the external transfers link appeared. The interface is pretty straightforward – you get your regular checking account linked there, an option to do a one-time transfer, to set up a repeating transfer and view the penging transfer. Makes you wonder why they won’t do all the transfers from a single Web page, but nevertheless it’s still pretty useful.

What bothered me is the following excerpt from the account statement:

Interest Rate: 2.960000%
Last Statement APY: 0.000000%

Now, I have not been with the bank for more than a week, so I cannot see what interested I earned. That’s actually another gripe – at least ING keeps that day-by-day ticker, showing you down to the penny, how much money your account made that day. It looks like Emigrant Direct will only be attributing the money to the account at the end of the month, at which point the exact interest rate will become clear. The current 2.96% confuses me a bit – it’s too high for the advertised 3.0% to be considered cumulative and this one actual (since a 2.96% interest over 12 months would accrue much more than 3.0%) and if that’s the actual monthly rate, then what’s the deal with advertised 3.0%? Perhaps it’s just a leftover from their previous interest rate, and since I haven’t been with them for an old month, I am just shown some default interest rate valid for Emigrant accounts opened before the 3.0% deal.

Posted Thursday, March 10th, 2005 under Money.
  • James

    2.96% is the simple interest rate. 3.0% is the compounded interest rate. The difference is the amount of interest you get on the interest.

  • Thomas

    Emigrant’s website blows, as does their “customer service”. I called them 4 times on Sunday. Their system was down so they were supposed to call me back later. Then they couldn’t tell me why the amount I had deposited was not showing up in my account as “available” even though it had been deposited 2 weeks prior. “We’ll call you back; our computers are slow.” They didn’t call. I called them again and they can’t bring up on their screen the same info customers can, listing the dates and amounts we have “loaned” them at the rate of 3% interest. Let me know where I can get a loan at that rate will ya? They finally admitted they didn’t know why the web page was wrong, but assured me it would be fixed the next day.
    So, let them have your money but don;t expect the web site to be accurate, don’t expect it to work as nicely as ING’s site, and don’t expect to get an answer when you call their “service” number.

  • Alex

    Thomas, what you said is disturbing. Currently I have about 90% of my savings in my ING account and the rest in Emigrant Direct. Naturally, with higher APY I wanted to move the wads of cash into Emigrant, but experience like yours makes me think I’d better stay with good old trustworthy ING, where the site works impeccably.

  • c2396

    transfers out are problematic, too. It seems that you cannot transfer to a linkied account money you transferred in until about 10 working days AFTER you transferred the money in. That’s a lot longer than ING keeps it off-limits.
    The Emigrant website doesn’t keep two columns – one showing balance, the other showing available funds (funds you can transfer into a linked account), so you have to remember when you made a deposit, calculate 10 bz days from that date, and then figure when the amount’s available to transfer out into your linked account(s). It sucks. Another problem – I transferred money out to my linked acct. money I had deposited a few days before. Emigrant let me do it – then snatched the money back because the money I’d transferred out had been deposited less than 10 biz days prior. Weird. I had to call them to find out what was going on. Their CSR was a bit snippy when I suggested that they ought to make their website more user-friendly by showing acct. balance vs. funds available to be transferred out of Emigrant and into a linked acct.
    Even tho they’ve upped their rate to 3.25% (and ING’s upped theirs to 2.8, almost a half-point less), I’m VERY hesitant to put more than chump change into Emigrant – they don’t seem to have thoroughly thought thru their website prior to launch, and that makes me question their business plan.
    Anyone else have similar experience of strange transactions or less-than-satisfactory web experiences with Emigrant? Anyone else hesitant to put a large sum of $$ into Emigrant? My greed is at war with my cautious side here!

  • http://ING Sam

    Has nyone tried metlifebank?

  • david

    Thought I’d give you all a reason to stay with ING as I have…

    In the “account terms” disclosure with Emigrant, you will notice under the “Refusal to allow withdrawal” section something like:

    “We reserve the right to withold withdrawals for which we have not received 60 days written notice notifying us of your intention to withdraw funds…”

    I called ING, and checked their terms to confirm that the maximum time they can hold off on your requested withdrawal is 7 days.

    What if something “bad” happens? (Economy, terrorism, etc) I would hate to hear I can’t get to my money for 60+ days.

    Hope this helps,

    David

  • Tim Maloney

    ING ha a policy of 3 overdrafts, ever, and your account is cancelled. that’s reason enough not to go with ING. i don’t make a habit of it, but i’m sure i’ll do 3 before i die. ridiculous policy.

    ten days till you can get funds from your forst deposit, 5 days for every one after that?

    they haven’t taken down the barriers to doing business with a bank, they’ve just put up different ones.

    these online banks leave a lot to be desired. a WHOLE LOT of work to be done i think.

  • emigrant employee

    Emigrant Direct will not be chnging their interface even though we have given management the customers feedback
    they still feel that their isn’t a problem. When a customer fills out the initial application and validate
    ownership of their checking account they have ro wait for a letter that get’s sent out like 5-7 days after emigrant takes your money. Once you receivr your letter the customer has to register for online access to their account
    this is where it get’s interesting!!!! The customers information is manually enetered by emigrants communication dept and more than half of the cust checking account #’s or routing #’s are enetered wrong which means when u want to transfer funds from your emigrant account to your checking account sometimes your money winds up in a totally diffrent checking account(NO GOOD). Another thing is that being that Emigrant was ahead of the game to gain customers they cannot afford to raise their rates anymore which means the customers are dealing with alot of problems from emigrant for nothing because their competitors are catching up to emigrants rates and have a better and much smoother system especially their websites. So don’t let Emigrant fool you because their American Dreams Savings Account will not last to much longer after the other banks catch up. This info is as per management… >>soon to be x-emigrant employee……