When I mentioned E-Loan's high savings account interest rate in a previous post, I was in the process of opening an account to see how they compare to EmigrantDirect. Well, I accessed my account for the first time yesterday and discovered twice the amount of money I had transferred for my initial deposit.
At first I thought maybe I had clicked something one too many times in the sign up process and accidentally duplicated my initial transfer. The Account Details page, however, showed my transfer into the account for X dollars followed by an unexplained transfer back out for X dollars. The item by item balance showed $0 at that point, but the total account balance was 2X! Let's see, does 5 - 5 = 10? At E-Loan it does... sometimes.
What's most disturbing is not that their automated system screwed up my initial transfer, it's that they can't correctly calculate my account balance. Is balance calculation any more than SUM(credits) - SUM(debits)? A first semester computer science student could get that right. I can't even imagine why the total balance and the final item by item balance would ever not be the same number. Obviously, those calculations are following different paths through the code to come up with different results.
Math problems aside, I can already say EmigrantDirect's web site is better than E-Loan's. It takes me two clicks from E-Loan's home page just to enter my login credentials. The other major shortcoming is the lack of the ability to import my account history into Microsoft Money using QIF or OFX files.
With all the problems and shortcomings of E-Loan, they better continue offering a healthy interest rate premium over competitors while they improve their web site and basic math skills.
Posted by JoshC at November 9, 2006 7:40 AMhttp://www.joshchristie.com/weblog/mt/mt-tb.cgi/150
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