Opening an Emigrant Direct Savings Account, Part II
The other day I noted that we're in the process of opening an Emigrant Direct savings account. Just two days after applying, the small deposits (and withdrawals) have now been made, and I've logged in and verified the amounts. Next up... Emigrant will pull the initial deposit from our linked account and then mail us a letter with our account number and instructions for accessing our account online. So now we wait.
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"Opening an Emigrant Direct Savings Account, Part II" was first published at fivecentnickel.com
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You don't need to wait for the letter. Just look at the ACH transaction code, chop off the zero's infront of the number, and this is your account number.
Good Luck
Joining Emigrant was THE MOST PAINFUL experience I have gone through. First you wait and wait for them to add those small deposits into your account. Then you WAIT for the letter to arrive via snail mail (since I didn't know the above trick). Then when you're in, you have to wait 24+ hours to transfer money in. But they don't make it obvious to you-- I hunted around the site for an hour trying to figure out how to add funds. It's an option that they enable on your account, at a much later date. My co-worker had to wait 8 days for them to turn on his transfer.
But my biggest beef with them, besides the shitty interface and lack of basic functions (email notification of transfers, hello), is that they duplicated a transfer erroneously for me. After shifting a hefty sum from ING to Emigrant, they attempted the exact same transfer, so i'm incurring a $25 bank overdraft fee. And I've been on hold 35 minutes and counting to get them to sort it out. Good luck, but look elsewhere for financial freedom.
But hey, you're getting 4%.
I almost opened an account with Emigrant until I ran across their "we have a right to hold your money for 60 days" clause in their agreement.
That alone, kept me from opening an account there.
My experience with ING has been so completely different. It's incredibly easy to sign up and the online site has an easy interface to transfer money back and forth. I wondered if I should change my money to Emigrant because of the better interest rate, but hearing this, there's no way I'm switching.
ING is way easier and user-friendly than Emigrant.....I have accounts with both.....but hey....4% is 4% but after Guest's comments regarding the 60 days clause, I'm nervous and thinking about moving my money back to ING....afterall, in an emergency, you need the money right away and NOT in 60 days....I should have read the fine print.....oh well.....HELOC anybody???
