Another good, but somewhat slow week with just under $70 coming in from beer money sites. And another week where I can’t purchase stocks on Monday because of a bank holiday, albeit a holiday worth celebrating. On the plus side I added two more revenue streams with UserTesting and 25Clicks. Unfortunately, I also had a slight, but extremely frustrating setback. My savings account at Ally bank was locked.
I use Ally because they have low overhead as an online-only bank and can provide a decent yield on savings. I figure I might as well make a little bit of money while my money sits there waiting to be invested. This week my account was locked due to suspected fraudulent activities. Fortunately, there were no fraudulent activities. I was just trying to link another bank account to transfer money. Silly me. After an entire week of back and forth with multiple phone calls and an assortment of documents I had to collect and send over, my account was finally unlocked. Unfortunately, bank to bank transfers are still forbidden. This could have been a simple phone call, an email with documents for verification while on the phone, and boom – resolved. Other banks do this well and they do it quickly. There are many golden rules, but one is never get between someone and their money.
Needless to say I am exploring other options. I may be able to send money directly from PayPal into my brokerage account. If I can, I will be doing that, and ceasing business with Ally after almost a decade. It’s a shame because they were doing well for so long. They were pushing the banking industry forward. There is no advantage for them anymore with high-yield savings accounts and low fees because everyone is doing that. The only segment they could have won in was customer experience and they have failed.