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Email this8:50 pm
February 22, 2013
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Received a voicemail from ING today:
"Good afternoon - my name is Paul and I am calling from ING Direct. I am just calling to leave a brief message please for [me]. We are reaching out to those that could possibly have an account with ALLY as we recognize that those accounts most likely must be closed by the end of this month given the recent purchase of ALLY by Royal Bank. We are hoping to get an opportunity to speak with you in regards to some fantastic offerings available through ING Direct to include our current rate sale and we ask that you please give us a call back at your earliest convenience. The phone number here is 1-888-464-3232 and we are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we look forward to your call."
Great marketing call, likely using data mining. At some point in 2012 I used ALLY to pull money from ING and to push money to ING. I suspect they are targeting and calling customers that had such transactions.
It may already have been said -- but I find it interesting: BNS buys ING and runs it as a going concern. RBC buys ALLY and shuts it down.
Greg
7:08 pm
December 12, 2009
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Hi Greg,
Thanks for pointing this out. I doubt their data mining goes that deep, though, into specific EFT transactions between Ally and ING accounts. It's possible that they may have reached out to anyone with a linked Ally account within their ING profile, though, but specifically mining incoming and outgoing EFT reports seems unlikely. In some ways, banks' analytics & systems are advanced and in other ways, they are somewhat primitive by comparison. 
In an ironic twist, ING Direct still uses RBC with which it clears its EFT files and cheques drawn on ING accounts through, since ING Direct is not a "Direct Clearer", even after Scotiabank completed its acquisition.
RBC bought Ally almost entirely for the consumer and dealer financing businesses, to grow its consumer lending book. The deposits (GICs mainly) were a nice add-on, but of those, they would only want the GICs as Ally was losing money on their high-interest savings accounts and it was probably easier to have people renew their Ally GICs as RBC GICs than to try and integrate the two systems. Scotiabank has a lot on its plate if it ever wants to integrate ING Direct's systems and platforms into Scotiabank, but given how well they did with Scotia iTRADE, I'm confident they can pull it off. TD Canada Trust, on the other hand, is still struggling to integrate MBNA Canada into its systems - they haven't even gotten rid of the horrid MBNA brand yet! 
Cheers,
Doug
10:14 pm
February 22, 2013
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Doug said
[snip]
It's possible that they may have reached out to anyone with a linked Ally account within their ING profile,
My ING account does not have any linkage to Ally. But, they may have just been calling everybody.
Doug said
[snip]
TD Canada Trust, on the other hand, is still struggling to integrate MBNA Canada into its systems - they haven't even gotten rid of the horrid MBNA brand yet!
[snip]
RBC bought the Shoppers Optimum portion of MBNA and has that completely integrated. CIBC bought some/all of the CitiBank portfolio and has that integrated.
TD/MBNA dropped their 3% cash back on gas and groceries to 2% and their $600 cap to $400 - both of which convinced me it was time to look at Capital One. I now use my MBNA card to get the 2% till I reach the $400 cap and then switch to the Capital One card to get 1% now and and additional 1/2% at the anniversary of signing up. Bonus - they paid me $100 to open the account.
Greg
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