Speaking of simple, this new age bank is unfortunately everything but. The original idea was a wonderful one: to do away with the old banks that we all have to deal with and replace them with one that puts customer service first and has no overdraft fees or minimum balances. I loved the concept and once I had heard from a few early adopters that their experience had been almost seamless decided to dive in.
After testing the waters I quickly moved most of my savings from TD Bank into Simple. The best part of their offering for me was their visual way of saving money. You can easily put money into imaginary buckets and even ask that a certain amount of money be taken from your general bucket to save for specific goals so that you don’t even realize it’s happening until suddenly you’ve reached your goal. $1 a day for a new fancy $300 Moto X makes it feel so easy. They would even send a check with that amount to the address of your choice when the goal was complete – free of charge. I was saving like a loon while enjoying the beautiful way you can tag, track and add pictures to transactions when disaster struck.
In August 2014 Simple announced to their customers that they would be down for a few hours in the early morning Eastern Time so they can move their site onto their own platform and not rely on a third party going forward. I was onboard and watched it happen, but only a few hours after the new platform was implemented problems started piling up.
I experienced a long list of issues that I will explain, but while this was happening I diligently read Simple’s social media sites and read stories about much worse situations: the inability to use their debit card, receive a replacement or even reach customer service. Fortunately for me I read a tip they only shared on social media about how to skip to the front of the customer service call line.
Personally after the platform change I started to see duplicates of my transactions and incorrect overall balances that made me unsure of how much money I actually had in my account. When I called customer service I found that they had understandably not lived up to their promise of “never speak to a machine” and lost their signature fun and lighthearted delivery of service. They were also unhelpful in getting these problems fixed. They also have an online email type system where you can submit your issues. Their reply time went from 24 hours to several days – up to a week in some instances.
While all of this was going on they released a few new features and updates, which angered customers since they were focusing their developer efforts on rolling out new features when the very essence of them being a bank did not work properly. However, the worst issue I experienced was part of why I finally decided to abandon Simple. I bought a fair amount of clothing (about $800) on a discount website called Hautelook that was recently acquired by the fabulous store Nordstrom Rack. This shopping spree was a result of my issue with impulse control on supposed bargains, which I have since remedied. Luckily even in this instance I quickly realized my mistake and returned almost all of these items. The returned money took a while to hit my account, but it did – except for one $75 transaction. In Simple it was deposited and in the same minute extracted from my account. This issue resulted in me calling and emailing with Hautelook and Simple on a ridiculous number of occasions. Simple sent verification that it wasn’t their fault. Hautelook did the same. And it went unresolved. I decided to not purchase from Hautelook again and after realizing it’s been months of dealing with this added stress from Simple, a bank that claimed to be above all things simple, I abandoned them.
Several more months later I saw $75 had been deposited into my empty Simple account, marked from Hautelook. No explanation. They had lied and kept 75 of my dollars for months and returned it without explanation. And if that wasn’t enough a few months after that I received a message saying that I had a negative balance (I didn’t) and needed to rectify it immediately or they would close my account (not the worst thing). I couldn’t believe it. I messaged them asking what the hell they were talking about. Days later I received another message saying I was sent that message in error. It’s been six months since this platform change and they are still beyond broken. Understandably during that entire time they closed enrollment for their service and I’m not sure it will ever open – or should.