Sharon, over at consumerist.com just wrote a rant about the bankone.com migration over to chase.com this past weekend. If you'll recall, I wrote a post earlier this week about the same thing, but I had an entirely different experience than this woman did. I too have been a long time customer of Gary Wheaton, then First Chicago, then Bank One, and now Chase. And I too use Quicken to download all of my transactions, including scheduled bill payments. And unlike Sharon, I've had no problems whatsoever.
I think the difference is that I schedule my bill payments online, directly through the website, rather than inputting them into Quicken first and then uploading them to the website. Using the one step update, Quicken will automatically download all of the scheduled payments. And then once the payments are actually made, Quicken will match up the entries and 'clear' the transaction. So, it's been a fairly seamless process for me. I haven't really noticed any difference between Quicken's bill payment service and the bank's payment service. And I certainly wouldn't pay $9.95 for the privilege of using Quicken's bill payment service. But maybe someone can enlighten me on this one. Perhaps Sharon has an older version of Quicken or hasn't set up her accounts properly?
Sharon also complains about the longer 'float' with Chase (i.e., the fact that Chase withdraws the funds from her account earlier than Bank One did). Well, I hate to break it to her, but the majority of banks are doing the same thing. And on the flip side of the coin, Chase can do more payments through electronic funds transfer (vs. paper checks) than Bank One ever could. Instead of having to schedule some of my payments 5 days in advance, I can do it 1 or 2 days. So, the float works both ways.
As for the comments that other folks made about chase.com's inferior website design, I wonder if they've actually visited the site recently, because with the new improvements, it was "rated the best retail banking Web site among 29 banking competitors by Keynote WebExcellence Scorecards."
Anyway, I thought I'd share with you some highlights of the new website's enhanced features from an article that was posted on our intranet site:
- An aggregated view of all Chase accounts, including mortgages.
- Free Security Alerts. The site will let customers know if there are possible security concerns, such as a change to a password or user ID.
- Intraday account balances. Balances on Chase.com are updated throughout the day.
- Enhanced online bill-payment. More bills can be paid through electronic transfer rather than paper check on Chase.com, meaning faster payments.
- The ability to quickly view more account activity. Chase.com users can see 90 days worth of checking and savings account activity without having to view a past account statement.
- Small business account enhancements. People with small business accounts will be able to manage those accounts and their personal accounts under one log-on.
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