NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN........ALLY.CA!!!! | Page 2 | Ally | Discussion forum

To gr8wun:
In answer to your question as to why, "The banks have the money and scale to do this if it made financial sense from a banks point of view, so what is missing???".
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The answer is that Chartered Banks in Canada (especially large ones like RBC) have a liberal elitist mentality and a sense of entitlement and do not feel that they should have to compete on a level playing field in the marketplace, or provide any extra customer service in order to get business. They can gouge their customers and receive bailout money from taxpayers with impunity, without the need to be competitive due to their shear size alone. Smaller start-up banks need to be more innovative and bring better quality and more competitive products to the marketplace in order to make a niche for themselves. The large banks can not be bothered with the time and money required to keep well informed customers from leaving, and it is not profitable to them to provide better products in order to keep a relatively few small fry from leaving the pen of the vast majority of people who are complacent.

jy said:

I was just informed by Ally that to open transfer accounts, they now accept only cheques with pre-printed addresses on them. Has anyone encountered a similar problem? Is this requirement unique to Ally?

I just logged in to Ally and still see the option to use "online test deposits" instead of having to use the second option of paper cheques to link an account. I've linked up three accounts recently using online test deposits with no issue and the option is still there in the logged in account view. Cheques aren't required for linking that I can see.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're stating and you're talking exclusively about the details when you send in paper cheques (without implying the online linking no longer exists). From what I've seen, pre-printed cheques or original account statements are the norm when linking accounts at most institutions. I've never even seen cheques that aren't pre-printed other than promotional Mastercard Cheques. Many institutions will provide you with a set of pre-printed temporary cheques for your savings accounts (i.e. cheques that you aren't allowed to actually use to write a cheque) in order to allow you to link up your accounts more easily with other institutions. HSBC Direct printed 25 temporary cheques for me for my savings account so I could do all my linking and even waived the usual charge.

Doug said:
Regarding Ally Bank sign-up, I had the same issue as Prag's husband. I believe I registered online on either Sept. 5th or 6th, tried calling Ally to complete sign-up, was told to call back in a couple business days and then told they had to call me. I waited for the call, so I called back several times and was told "they're working through their list" and would get back to me.

I guess their backlog of work for manual credit checks must be really piling up, presumably due to excess demand to open new accounts due to their interest rates being so high. An understaffing issue probably combined with underestimating how many signups would not be able to be handled by the automated credit check. They should state a more accurate amount of time to call you back when the automated credit check process I went through online doesn't work and they have to do things manually. By saying "a couple days" instead of 5 or 10 business days they are not managing expectations. I would much rather know it will take a while up front and stop thinking about it than be left wondering and inquiring.

We did not call them back other than the initial phone call post website-signup as we wanted to see how long it would take for everything to happen on its own. It took 5 business days for them to get through the queue and create my husband's account, but I imagine now it's likely longer. If you're lucky enough to get through the automated credit check web signup like I did, it's literally instantaneous.

I've done some bank to bank transfers in the last few days and they all occur expediently.

I got a call from Ally last week where they were mentioning a problem on their statements that they will be rectifying. I thanked them and said I don't pay much attention to statements anyway since I login to see the current status of my account online. I hadn't gotten my statement yet so made note to look closely at it when it arrived.

I got my first statement from Ally last Friday and looked for the mistake they spoke about. I found it: in a couple lines it said $1.2 million dollars had been deposited in my account. LOL! The reality was more like a thousand or so.

The final total and the debits were correct, but in those boxes up top the total credits was obviously calculated improperly for the statements. Online, my account view has always been correct.

Well, at least I was temporarily a millionnaire on paper - sort of. 😆

For me, the process was slow. If you don't have a pre-printed cheque with your name and address on your cheque, it's going to take you a LONG time to get an account. You have to send in additional information such an utility bill with your name, address or a bank recent original bank statement.