[hosay123]

Ordinarily I might consider this worth a loss in reputation, but given the uniquely one-sided battle that is trying to cause any disruption in the banking industry, I'd be willing to cut these guys some slack. In this area the enemy has big guns

[ConstantineXVI]

I wouldn't cut them any slack. I can't say my bank cards have ever gone down. Totally losing access to your customer's money doesn't help your reputation at all, "disruptor" or not.

EDIT: "The Bancorp Bank", the bank Simple farms out the actual banking to, has been around since 2000[0]. Simple _might_ have an excuse for screwing up like this if this was all their own system, but an established bank doesn't.

[0] http://www.thebancorp.com/about/

[hosay123]

The inverse of this is exactly why I'd cut them slack: there's no way for them to do business without partnering with the competition, in this case being solely dependent on them.

Edit: it's exactly like trying to reinvent Twitter by consuming their APIs, and we've all seen how that goes

[ConstantineXVI]

The Twitter comparison doesn't work here; Bancorp is explicitly a middleman. As long as Bancorp is getting paid, it's in their best interest (excuse the pun) for Simple to stay afloat.

Bancorp is a closer analog to EC2; they let Simple get off the ground quickly without having to build and harden their own banking systems and transaction networks. Also like EC2, Simple gets to take the heat equally if Bancorp screws up.

That said, this is pretty bad, but if Simple had built their own network and left a glaring security hole open, they'd be utter toast.

[hosay123]

In the context of Wikileaks, Visa and Amazon were explicitly middlemen. As long as Visa and Amazon were paid, it was in their best interest <snip>

No doubt you already see where I'm going with this.

[anona]

They are dealing with people's money, and should be held to the same standard as every other business in that space.

They also don't deserve any special 'slack' just because they use other companies services. You wouldn't accept that excuse from Bank of America.

[gojomo]

Unless you use your bank cards every hour of every day, you don't know for sure if you've ever lost access, perhaps for longer than this Simple outage. Maybe you've just been lucky enough not to try access when it was out.

[bonzoesc]

They're literally disrupting banking right now. Is accepting unreliability from financial institutions the disruption banking needs?

[zaidf]

Is being unforgiving to new entrants in a typically scary industry the type of behavior that will encourage new competition?

[jacquesm]

You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world.

Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to.

When you disrupt the banking industry you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Let's hope they have it fixed very quickly or it may well kill Simple.

Imagine being in a bar somewhere right now and having just bought a round finding out that you can't pay for it. You'll hear about that one for years.

[zaidf]

you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out.

I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't justified by the upside. Hopefully, for the majority of Simple users the upside will make the rare downtime bearable.

My view would change if this becomes a regular occurrence with Simple. But that does not seem to be the case.

[jacquesm]

Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home.

Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system.

It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do.

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.

[zaidf]

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.

No one is arguing that you should be able to do that. And it is kind of insulting to imply that that is how the folks at Simple look at development without some source.

Systems break for many reasons, and you can't simply assume the cause to be a social fad attitude of the dev team.

[gojomo]

I highly doubt Simple's invite-only early-adopters are dependent on their Simple card as their only way to buy beer and/or (your downthread example) gas for the drive home. (And I hope they're not using their card for both on the same night.) #firstWorldProblems

[jacquesm]

You really should have a look at how Simple bills itself. They bill themselves expressly as a replacement for your bank. The whole idea is that you absolutely rely on simple to do their thing or you might as well not use them.

http://simple.com/

If Simple is used the way they intend you to use them those scenarios are playing out right now. You really can't shift the blame for that onto those that believed the Simple proposition and acted as though simple was going to deliver.

Ordinary everyday people do not do single-point-of-failure analysis on their wallet, they simply expect it to work.

[gojomo]

And as noted in my other comment, my giant banks have failed in similar ways, leaving my to my own other options or simply shit-outta-luck for a few hours. You seem to have a similar complaint above about 'Rabobank'.

I don't see any marketing claim on the Simple site that they'll have fewer outages than the Rabobanks/BofAs of the world. (Where do you see that claim, or actual delivered level of service, from any actual existing bank?)

[bonzoesc]

Guess what?

https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480

https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889

[gojomo]

This just in: people tweeting also sometimes embellish their situations for dramatic effect!

For example, in surrounding tweets @Skroob jokes about paying with Bitcoin, mentions his dining party has other options, and then despite some disappointment concludes with sympathy for @Simplify. He further says that Simple's "company policy of ignoring the s* out of HN, especially during outages" is something that "just makes me love you guys more".

So: while non-customer HNers with crazy-high standards whinge, real customers can laugh about the situation (and even laugh about HN's negativity-bias).

[notatoad]

From our position on the sidelines, it's easy to say that banking is an industry that needs some disruption. But it's also an industry where service interruptions are absolutely inexcusable, and none of the established players have issues like this. Maybe the only reason that simple is able to 'disrupt' is because they don't fully appreciate the requirements of the industry, and if they put as much effort into failover and redundancy as the big players they wouldn't be able to disrupt anything.

[suresk]

I'm genuinely curious - what is Simple doing that is disrupting the banking industry (excluding, of course, the current literal disruption of banking for their customers)?

My current setup is a cash-back credit card, with the bills for it paid from a high-yield savings account. I net close to 2% cash back on the card, and around .8% APR on the savings account, and pay exactly $0 in fees. Based on the language on Simple's site, I'm guessing the APR on their savings is closer to .25% or so, and they definitely don't offer cash back on the use of their card.

Sure, the tools they offer are nice, but my credit card provider also has pretty nice spending analysis tools (that don't require an iOS device), and lots of other providers are adding or improving spending tools as well.

What am I missing?

[wmf]

IIRC the original innovations of Simple were (1) usable UI (including mobile) and (2) a single account that's debit and credit. #1 has been mostly caught up by traditional banks and #2 mostly benefits financially irresponsible people (of which there are many, but perhaps not many around here).

[suresk]

I may be misunderstanding you re: #2, but it their Simple card appears to just be a debit card with no overdraft protection.

[wmf]

Their original claim from 2010 was "We will launch later this year with a simple card with in built checking, savings, rewards and a line of credit." Since they're still in invite-only beta, maybe not all of the features have been implemented yet.