Anyone have Electric Orange checking account?

[Free4Life11]

I just opened an account to try out. I figure that I'm not making any interest off my current checking account so I might as well try to earn a little interest. There are no paper checks, however, you can have a paper check sent to another party and ING will mail it. I do plan to keep my current account open with a little money in there in case I need to write a paper check at the last minute.

Has anyone used it? Any reviews?

 

[Hedy]

I've had mine 4 months. I like it a lot. I haven't had a problem with the lack of checks. My only problem has been that one of my charge cards wouldn't accept the ING routing #, so I had to pay that bill through ING rather than on their website.

 

[deltachi8]

Hmm, I have been thinking about it as well. I write only one, maybe two paper checks a month (school lunches) with the rest going out as electronic checks. Glad to see it is working well for some, interested to see if anyone else has experience.

 

[Free4Life11]

Thanks for the replies so far. I also only write about two checks a month and have direct deposit. I'll probably use the brick-and-mortar account for rebate checks and that type of thing.

 

[emerymt]

What a great move! If you think about it, the bank would charge you 6-10% for a loan, but when they use your money to loan to other people, they're giving you less than 1/2 of 1%! Anyone who keeps much of a balance in a checking account should MOVE IT OUT! We made $700 last year- money we wouldn't have had we left it in the bank.

I looked at ING, HSBC and Emigrant Direct, and settled on Emigrant for three reasons:
1. They usually pay the highest interest rate, although this varies, sometimes HSBC is higher.
2. HSBC had hideous password requirements-a couple of 12 digit numbers- so tell me again how secure is a password you HAVE TO WRITE DOWN? This was a year ago, maybe they changed.
3. Emigrant is an old American bank. HSBC & ING are both European.
4. Emigrant has real banks with buildings and tellers. No where close to me, but they are there, somewhere

Now, the last two are just for my comfort level, but with all that money floating around in cyberspace, I need that!

Anyway, people, do yourselves a favor and look into online banking. You will not regret it!

 

[AnninIowa]

I opened an ING account a couple months ago to stash money away for vacations. Love the interest rate, and it keeps my money out of sight so I can't spend it!

 

[Free4Life11]

Thought I'd give an update.
I've had the Electric Orange account for about 2 weeks now and love it! One thing I like is everything shows up right away on the online banking -- with my Wells Fargo account some charges would show up then disappear for a few days, but with ING they stay there. I ordered a check to pay one bill I have that uses payment coupons but I had to put "University c/o myself" so I don't like the way it looked. In the future I'll just write a paper check myself and transfer money to my old account. Most of my online bills have gone through just fine.

Very impressed so far! Haven't earned a ton of interest but I've been keeping a low balance. What I like is that transfers between my ING Savings occur immediately. Oh yeah the lack of ATM's hasn't been a problem for me since I can use the debit card to get cash back and most places around here offer it.

 

[summerrluvv]

I read on another board that ING is closing EO accounts of those that have low balances and that have overdraft protection that they have used. So be careful