Less-Than-Ideal Features of Ally Bank's Transfer Service

As I reported in October, Ally Bank made a big change to its online banking system. Part of the change involved the bank-to-bank ACH transfer service. Ally now uses Cashedge to conduct the transfers. Before the change, it was Ally's own customer service. In the October post I reviewed some of the transfer details such as the times it takes for transfers and dollar limits. Based on the comments in that post, I don't know anyone who thought these changes were improvements. As I've been using the service in the last few months, I've noticed a few annoying issues.

First, in the account transaction summaries, you don't get any information about the transfers that have completed. In the summaries, transfers are shown as:

1/18/2011 ALLY BANK $TRANSFER

There are no details about where the funds came from or went to. Even if you click on this, the page doesn't show the source or destination of the transfer.

I asked Ally's CSR via the online chat if there's a way for it to be more descriptive. Here's the reply I received:

With our new transfer system there is no way to have those be more descriptive. We now send alert emails that let you know about pending transfers.

That brought up another issue. For every transfer, Ally emails you the transfer summary. Here's an example of what the email contains:

Transfer #: 123456789
Amount: $YYY.YY
From: Bank XYZ, Checking
To: Ally Bank, MMA Savings

One reader had expressed concern about having these details sent in unsecure emails. Even though there is no account number, someone could see what banks you have and how much you're transferring.

I asked the CSR if there's a way that this email feature could be disable or if the transfer details could be reduced. Here's the reply I received:

No, those are generated by our vendor and are not something we can edit. They do not include any information that is used to access your account.

In short, Ally's new transfer service has quite a few limitations. I hope Ally is seeing benefits from this change (perhaps in cost or security). I don't think customers are seeing any advantages. If you've seen any advantages or if you have other issues with Ally's new transfer system, please leave a comment.