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Presidential--Good or Bad???


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#1 ABOUTBENS

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Posted 13 August 2005 - 07:59 PM

blink.gif I'm thinking about opening a checking account with Presidential to get the awesome rate. Can anyone tell me about their experiences with this bank, either good or bad. Thanks. biggrin.gif



#2 markber

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Posted 13 August 2005 - 10:56 PM

QUOTE(ABOUTBENS @ Aug 13 2005, 12:59 PM)
blink.gif I'm thinking about opening a checking account with Presidential to get the awesome rate.  Can anyone tell me about their experiences with this bank, either good or bad.  Thanks.  biggrin.gif
View Post




I do not have personal experience with this bank. I can only tell you that during my 4 or so years of monitoring banking boards, I do not remember seeing serious complaints about this bank. People usually give very positive feedback about this bank. I copied a post about Presidential Bank from The Motley Fool board below.

Check iBankDesign resource page for Presidential bank here.


Mark




by joelcorley
"
Fools,

Well, it's been a year and a half since I opened this account and I must say I'm pleased with it. There have been a couple of interesting things happen with the account in recent days.

Congrats for Presidential's Security

First, I wrote a fat check to my XSO last Wednesday as part of the divorce settlement and I was pleased to receive a phone call from Presidential Monday morning asking me if the check was legitimate. I've written bigger checks against my credit union account and I don't believe they've ever called me before.

New Bill Payment System Review

Second, Presidential has “upgraded” their bill payment system. Or more precisely their bill payment software (e-commerce?) provider, DigitalInsite.com ( http://www.digitalinsight.com ), has upgraded their system. At first I was excited about the upgrade...

The previous system was cumbersome to use if you needed to make multiple payments in the same session and it required you click through several pages, which were slow to update. The new interface shows a single page with an overview of bill history, bills pending, and a list of all merchant accounts with any pending bills marked with a graphic. To review and pay the minimums is an almost trivial exercise if auto-pay isn't set, though I rarely pay just the minimums.

Other changes aren't so nice. Finding the merchant information is definitely not intuitive. It's no longer possible to review the merchant's address and phone number if the bill is paid electronically, so you can never know for sure the bill is being sent to the right payee – this has actually happened to me once and the only way I caught it was to check the payment address. To add a merchant account, you select “Add a Bill” from the top and either search for them or fill in the address, phone number and account info. To edit a merchant account, you click on “Manage My Bills”, select an existing account from a pull-down box and then wade through a series of pages one question at a time.

Editing a previously scheduled or auto-paid bill is also a pain. Ok, let me revise that. Editing a previously scheduled or auto-paid bill is impossible. Instead you must cancel it and schedule a new payment. That means that if you want to override the date or amount of a bill you currently auto-pay, you must delete the payment and schedule a new one. Definitely not intuitive.

In general, I think the new interface is prettier. It also sports some definite improvements, especially when it comes to reviewing the status of your bills. That first page was clearly designed to give you an overview of all your bills at once on a single screen. That includes bills you've paid recently, bills that are about to be paid and bills and accounts that need might or might not need attention. Adding a merchant account may be slightly better; but beyond that, editing any existing payment or merchant account information is a pain. It's difficult to find what you're looking for, you have to wade through a number of prompts and in some cases, your only chose is to delete your work and begin again. Of course this last complaint might go away as I get used to the interface...

My current opinion is that the interface is really no better than the old one. Even though it begins with a promising idea, it seems that all the design effort went into that one page. Even there they could have made improvements by providing hot links to edit the information displayed. What looked like a promising update has been a disappointment in my book.

- Joel
"
source: boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=21788274







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