[spyspy]

Having been a customer of Charles Schwab for several years at this point, I've never seen the appeal of Simple. I get better interest rates, fantastic customer service, unlimited ATM rebates and a host of brokerage services, all for free.

[CobrastanJorji]

Fellow Schwab customer here. Unlimited ATM rebates has been great. I was surprised at bow nice it felt to whip out my Schwab card next to the scary little free-standing ATM machine at the cash-only shop with some ridiculous $4.00 ATM fee. Felt like a cheat code.

[spyspy]

Try it at a casino. You'll feel like you're robbing the place.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Felt like a cheat code.

Until the day you use an ATM with a skimmer. Private machines are a dangerous cesspool.

[gtaylor]

> I get better interest rates, fantastic customer service, unlimited ATM rebates and a host of brokerage services, all for free.

All great points. The customer service in particular is just outstanding. If there was the opposite experience of calling into Comcast support, it'd be calling into Charles Schwab. They know their stuff and are willing and able to patiently explain things well beyond a script. The yearly free financial consult is awesome, too.

Only annoyance is that some of the procedures require printing out a PDF, filling it in, and physically mailing it or faxing it back. Hopefully that'll be less common in the future.

[connorshea]

That's interesting, I got an email from them a few months after signing up to be contacted at a Career Fair and they left the {{CLIENT NAME}} placeholder in the email. So I figured they were incompetent :P

[rkho]

Schwab is fantastic. Their service is top-notch and I'm really glad I'm no longer with Chase. I once accidentally rated an online chat interaction lowly, and received a follow up call by a concerned manager less than a day later.

[tacostakohashi]

Lots of love happening for Schwab here - but it's more or less the same with Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, etc - ATM rebates for any ATM, no fees, free checking / checkbooks, etc.

A cheat code is a nice way of describing how refreshing this is in comparison with the standard bank business model of offering some fairly limited basic checking account as a loss leader, then constantly trying to upsell you on every other kind of product / account imaginable, trying the overdraft protection scam on you, ATM fees, checkbook fees, etc, etc.

It's a wonder they can stay in business.

[flavor8]

The only issue with Schwab is their ridiculous password policy (8 chars). Turning on 2FA on your account is a must with them (they'll happily send you a little hardware token generating dongle if you ask.)