There are some benefits to non brick and mortar banks. Most of the time it comes down to reduced fees for regular banking. Each one comes its own features, benefits, and drawbacks, but there can be difficulties and quirks too. The PC choice spin off, Simplii, is no exception.
Fees are often low or out right waived and checks don’t cost a fortune either. For the most part, basic banking can be done for free but there are hidden gotcha’s. One of those would be over drafting an account without protection. In this case, the fees are $50 or more per time which could easily blow past a monthly fee schedule for someone who got caught off guard. Idle money isn’t really accumulating interest either. Its some of the other quirks, however, that are just plain weird.
Take their USD account, for example. You can’t withdraw USD funds from it or make USD payments. The one exception is to send money in a global wire transfer. Otherwise, anything put into this account is stuck without interest or the ability to easily use the funds. One can’t even order USD cash from this account which seems really odd. These limitations aren’t advertised really advertised up front.
Or how about their “high interest” savings account? Not even half a percent at this point yet they easily charge more than 4% on the cheapest borrowing options and certainly far more than that on credit cards or a line of credit. To be fair, most banks are not offering much for interest these days, but less than half a percent is pretty much zero. Another example of a wasted account. Any TFSA accounts would fall under this category too because of limited investment options. Aside from some low return GICs, what can you do?
And if that wasn’t enough, there are quirks in the system that will make you cringe. Update your phone app and loose push notifications. For the second time this has happened to me and there is no magic or quick cure. Re-registering the device does nothing. And it gets even worse if you re-install the app. Instead of easily being able to delete, re-install, and re-register for push notifications, there is some quirky back end 3 day delay that goes on with no notification to the consumer what-so-ever. The web side will show no registered devices, the phone side will show it registered, and nothing will work. Calling in will be equally frustrating.
Conversations regarding this will be met with the same confusion you already have. It seems that this “feature” embedded in the back end is not obvious, well known, or implemented in a helpful manor. The people answering your call will initially be just as baffled and inevitably will string you along telling you to try again in three days time. It wouldn’t take much for a pop up or some other message telling you it will be 3 days before you can register, but instead, the app happily shows it all done without it being done and no notification leaving you baffled as to why it isn’t working.
Obviously, you get what you pay for so in this case so I suppose one cannot complain too much. It just seems service levels and what should be decent and proper communication just aren’t anymore. Almost as bad as some of the hoops required to get house insurance these days. With so many advancements, why is it so difficult and/or frustrating to get things done? To me, its simply stupid.