Ally ACH now may have a hold

51hh, did you take time to contact Ally in advance of making the decision to make this your hub account?  After they changed their method of performing bank-to-bank transfers, did you ask the proper questions and get the details about how those transfers would be handled?  Did you ask "What kind of hold will be on the funds after I transfer them in?".  Banks very often have a hold, and if the bank was following its own policy then you just weren't understanding all the details of how banks actually work.  Didn't you understand that?  Maybe you should do more research before just saying a bank is getting worse and sucks.  That's pretty harsh.  You need to understand the bank first.  It doesn't sound like Ally actually stole money from you, your money was still there.  It was earning interest at Ally.  Therefore, the bank is fine, you just aren't a savvy consumer, right?

In other words, follow your own advice that you give to others to basically suck it up if you didn't ask all of the proper relevant questions and then find you are dissatisfied with the bank's service.  If you think the bank wasn't treating you fairly, then maybe you should give the same respect to others who were unfairly treated by their banks rather than treating them like idiots who don't understand the difference between APY and interest rates.

I have found Alliant CU to be the most effective hub account.

Its so nice to see that you're letting it go while continuing to attack me.  So to your continued points:

1) My application was not just rejected, they did significant damage to my credit report.  I am still trying to get that fixed.  Rather than a single inquiry they left FIVE across multiple days across my account.

2) I understand that using the number of inquiries is a standard bank procedure to screen for accounts.  My husband met their stated requirements yet the account was rejected for the number of inquiries anyway.  That means they had no intent to open the accounts.  That is a version of bait and switch and is a form of consumer fraud.  That is much worse that a simple "hold" on money that is earning interest.  What word would you use to describe this?  Here is what is stated about bait and switch on Wikipedia:

"In retail sales, a bait-and-switch is a form of fraud in which the party putting forth the fraud lures in customers by advertising a product or service at a low price or with many features, then reveals to potential customers that the advertised good is not available at the original price or the list of assumed features is different.  In the United States, courts have held that the purveyor using a bait-and-switch operation may be subject to a lawsuit by customers for false advertising"

You can choose to have a different definition, or call this something other than bait and switch, but in either case, it is a form a fraud since it appears based on my, and more than a handful of others' expereience is that the bank never intended to honor the accounts or the rewards.

3) In addition to what they did to me, the bank took people's money and left it in limbo, without returning it, for up to 3 weeks.  During that time, the money did not earn interest.  That is a finanancial hit.  So was their refusal to open my husband's account so that he would earn their bonus.  Another financial hit, especially when it left him with many additional inquiries against his ChexSystem file.

My intention was not to beat up the bank.  My intent was the same as yours.  To warn people, in a fashion and using words that matches the extent of what they did to people.  Its good to see that your good intentions are honorable while mine are a function of anger.  Note that I waited over a month to get "angry" enough to write a review.  I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Until I saw our ChexSystems reports and had to jump through multiple hoops (including faxing copies of my report to the bank because they claimed that I was lying, told me I really had applied for an account 5 times over the period of multiple days, forcing my husband to directly contact them because they wouldn't work on fixing his report otherwise, E-mailing them a dozen times, etc.) to try to fix the damage they caused.  I wasn't simply irritated that I wasted 10 minutes.  I wasn't simply irritated because my money was on hold an extra few days.  I'm mad that I have wasted days of effort over this and the bank doesn't care...and is doing it to others.  I suffered damages.  Therefore, a warning in the form of an appropriate review, was warrented in my opinion.  However, still not in yours, it would seem.

And I'm mad that someone posted such an asinine response.  Especially when you obviously posted a complaint about something much more trivial.

51hh, I just wanted to ask you a question about a comment you made above:

"ACH hold is still very rare; thus I did not ask or anticipate the ACH hold. "

Maybe I'm not understanding your meaning... But in my experience, almost all of the banks that I'm familiar with that have their own ACH systems that allow you to initiate transfers in and out have deposit hold periods for funds you pull into those same accounts via ACH...

If I use my E*Trade account to pull funds in from elsewhere via ACH, there's a three business day hold on those funds once they've arrived at E*Trade. Same with Capital One, though their hold period is five business days for ACHs... I believe Schwab bank also has a three day hold period on incoming ACH funds.

But, the part I've never understood is I have other accounts, mostly RCA accounts, that don't have their own ACH systems in online banking. No transfer capability at all in quite a few of those banks. And if I use the ACH systems of E*Trade, Schwab or Cap One to send the funds to any of those RCA accounts, they invariably arrive the next business day and have no hold period at all... The funds are immediately available once credited to the account.

I've never seen an explanation of why the one group of banks are operating one way, and the other group of banks are operating entirely differently...

What I'd really like to find is a bank that has its own reasonably speedy ACH system in online banking and DOESN'T place a hold on incoming funds.

 

 

 

The ALLIANT ACH system is wonderful.

I use it as a HUB account to transfer money as I need to between my RCAs.

Transfer --- in or out -- are posted the next business day with NO HOLDS. They also have no limits in dollar amounts (that I have reached anyway) or in the number of accounts that you can set up for transfer.

Hard to ask for more