| I tried opening an account with Simple, as I heard all the buzz around the company and it seemed like they had a nice mobile app. A friend got me an invite to their service (it's invite only right now). So I fill out their online application, and they say they'll get back to me. Cool. A few days later, I get an email saying that they'll need additional verification because I've been a victim of identity theft in the past. What? I've never had such problems, and I checked with my bank/etc. and they didn't find any problems either. So they want me to get notarized copies of a bunch of documents- I go do that, which costs me $50+ in fees. I send the documents to them. A week later, they contact me again- there's no way they can open an account for me, for undisclosed reasons, but I can call their support to learn more.
OK, I call their support, and a (very nice) guy tells me that it has to do with me not being a US citizen and my SSN being different in some way (? I've been living here for almost 3 years now, working, being paid, opening bank accounts, etc. without ever having a problem). He apologizes, and that's it. Of course my $50+ in notary fees are lost. They've been more problematic to me in 2 weeks without even having an account than all of my banks that I've had accounts with for years combined. So yeah, so much for "a financial service for people fed up with banks" |
Somewhat ironically, you could go to a bank to have this done for free if you happen to be a customer of the bank (and many times, even if you're not). Wells Fargo has free notary services for their customers, as one example, and this is pretty much the only time I actually have had to step into a physical branch.