Just a heads up!
20 cents back for every 53-cent cup of Cuban coffee--sounds like a great deal to me!
@Anonymous wrote:I got a mailer for a bonus on a new savings account and started considering moving some banking over to Discover. I started looking into things and saw I just missed a bonus on opening a checking account (9/15/15). I know I got mailers for that but I hadn't hatched my new plan yet. Awww.
In any case, I've been searching here and elsewhere for info/reviews on checking and savings and am not coming up with much. Since this is a new thread, I'd welcome hearing any thoughts. The thing that's made me wary is reading about potential slow transfers. The thing that I like about Discover is their interface on most things is done well. I'd been thinking of doing this bit of banking/bill pay etc. with US Bank or DCU but their sites/apps haven't wowed me.
I'm trying hard to like them, but so far no much luck. Here is my experience:
I use them mainly to park part of my rainy day funds in their Savings, and to pay my ebills for the cashback checking bonus. Transfers are very slow indeed, like 4 -5 business days, so I usually push the money from Alliant (is free) if I want to move the money quickly.
Their online banking and CS are not too great (nothing like their credit card side): slow and clunky, seems to go offline more frequently than others, although nothing earthbreaking. The worst for me is that if you schedule a transfer and it happens to start processing on Friday**, then the whole transaction dissapears during the weekend. I almost get a NSF fee on my BofA because, after contacting them 4 times about the missing transfer ( I needed the money to be there by the following week) and they assured me the 4 times that there was no trace of the transfer on their systems, so sorry but you need to re-schedule it. Lucky me I decided to wait until Monday, lo and behold, the transfered money was rigth there as was the transaction record!
If you have a way to ACH your money from other institutions and/or don't intend to use the account for critical stuff, they are OK. But since I became a member of Alliant CU, I'm considering more and more to move away from Discover.
** Edit: I'm not exactly sure if it is when they start processing or actually processed the transaction. It was a weird thing, like the transaction changed its status, but the systems did not actually updated things during the weekend, so it ceased to appear on scheduled transactions, but was not in completed transactions, either.
Pros:
- ACHs from Discover Bank to Chase scheduled before 5pm on a weekday are available the next business day (IME)
- 10 cents per debit card transaction is great for small purchases (they run 20 cents per transaction promotions several times a year)
- CSRs are obnoxiously friendly
Cons:
- Website is slooooooooow
- Mobile app has glitches (if you make a transfer, account balances don't update if you try to make a second transfer right away)
- When you use the bill pay feature, they don't take the money out of the account right away (like Chase does), so the money sits there for days until the payee receives it/cashes the check
Overall, not bad, but not quite ready for prime time yet