I live overseas but am an American and have a bank/checking account in the US with Citi. I want to earn more interest, and frankly ING Direct seems to have their on line stuff worked out well.
I probably need to write the occaisional check, have direct deposit, would like to deposit paper checks, on line transactions, use the debit card (especially for ATM) and I think that’s about it.
How have you actually found using ING Direct? Any drawbacks or things you learned over time that were great or less than great?
I liked ING Direct a lot. I only closed my account because I have a new checking account that pays more interest (5.51%).
All in all, I thought their online system was very easy to use. Transferring money was simple and you get a bonus for signing up if someone refers you ($25, IIRC).
I only used the savings account. I linked it with a brick and mortar bank checking account with no fees. I’d just transfer money in and out as needed. It takes a couple days to clear so I always left a pillow of around 1k. This worked out pretty well as I still had an actual bank to go to do things like counting jars of change and such, but I still earned good interest.
I’m not sure about the international aspects of your question, unfortunately.
I use ING Direct for savings and checking, and I have several CDs with them as well.
I couldn’t be more happy. As others have said, the site is very easy to use. I don’t think I’ve paid a single fee to ING for anything. You can easily and instantly transfer money between any two ING accounts (yours or someone else’s, even if it’s not business hours).
A few possibly-unexpected things you should know:
You don’t get a checkbook – you write the check online and they mail it out for you. PRO: They save your info for next time (like for bills), and you don’t have to find a stamp. CON: If you’re out someplace and you’d normally just write someone a check, you can’t.
You have to send paper checks to them to be deposited. This is really the only aspect of their service I don’t like, but seeing as how they have no branches, I’m not sure how else they could do it. It just seems risky to me to send endorsed checks through the mail, especially large ones. See below for how to get around this.
Their ATM network isn’t the most robust. I like using no-fee ATMs. There just don’t seem to be that many in my city where I can go. Yours may vary. I’ve gotten around this by getting cash along with buying groceries, if I need it.
How I get around the sending checks through the mail thing: Pretty simple – just maintain a free account at a local bank. You don’t have to use it, just keep the minimum in there so you can deposit checks. You can link this account to your ING account and transfer the money electronically. This takes a couple extra days, but the security is usually worth it, I think. I’m not sure how this would work for you unless you have a Citi branch over there you can use for this purpose.
One other thing I like about ING is they’re very good about communicating. They send out a letter to your address pretty much every time you do anything substantial with your account – I’ve gotten one each time I opened a CD, as well as when I linked a different checking account to my ING account. Yet, at the same time I’m not bombarded with credit card offers and all kinds of junk mail.
I’d be happy to answer any other questions you have.
Can’t help you with the Electric Orage Checking account, but we’ve had a savings account with them for years. We currently have a CD with them too, and have had an mortgage in the past.
We’ve had absolutely no problems with them. Every transaction occurs as it should. When we bought the house, the lawyer commented on how she had never seen the bank’s part of the transaction go so smoothly. Efficient is the word that comes to mind when I think of ING.
If they had offered a traditional mortgage (instead of an ARM), we would have used them for this house purchase without question.
Be careful that when you open your account online, you use a very plain vanilla U.S. checking account for the initial transfer. At sign up, they name a few of the types of accounts that do not work with their automatic verification procedures–but they don’t name all of them. I had the misfortune to use one of the types that didn’t work, but there was no way for me to know this from the info given at sign up.
As a result, ING has held my money hostage for six weeks and counting while I scramble around, trying to meet their verification procedures. They have been uncommunicative and unhelpful. They have done some things that have deliberately delayed this process. They have intimated that if I fail to verify the account, they will keep my money. I am very unhappy with ING at the moment.