ING Direct

Scotiabank recently bought out ING Direct and renamed the online bank «Tangerine». They truly are an online back and cannot do anything offline. All money comes out of the two ATMs they have and all accounts are opened online. I’m not sure why they even have a branch location since the people who work there will tell you to wait for an available computer. A few staff members are helpful but most provide vague instruction from a distance. I think they can greatly improve their customer experience and options online, as it is a waste of time to visit the branch.

I’ve been banking with ING Direct for over ten years. I’ve always been pleased with their customer service, but like their interest rates, their customer service has gone to shit.
At the end of February I had an RRSP GIC maturing, so I called ING Direct (this was a Saturday night at 11pm – I’m a big fan of their 24 hour customer service). I wasn’t impressed with the interest rates on the GICs (even CIBC had better rates!), so the customer service rep said that another option was to invest in mutual funds. This interested me, but I first wanted to ask some questions before purchasing a financial product I didn’t know too much about. However, the customer service rep said that she was not qualified to speak about mutual funds, and that there were designated hours for customers to call regarding mutual funds. But she also said that she could book a scheduled time for someone to call me – aweome!
Because the world revolves around Toronto, the designated mutual fund customer service hours did not take into account Western customers. The hours were 8am-​8pm, EST, Monday to Friday. For us Westerners, that’s 5am-​5pm PST, making it very difficult for people who work «regular» hours, such as myself, to call. (And I sure as hell wasn’t going to wake up at 5am to call about mutual funds.) However, since it was RRSP time, they had extended hours on Monday evenings, until 10pm EST (7pm PST). Due to having medical appointments after work on Mondays (see my review for Collingwood Physiotherapy & Wellness), I wouldn’t be free until 6pm PST, and the customer service rep scheduled someone to call me on Monday April 3^rd at 6:15pm PST. I even confirmed the day and time (and time zone). Well, 6:15pm PST on April 3^rd came and went, and no phone call.
I called ING back a couple of weeks later to express my dissatisfaction at the lack of phone call I was promised. At first the customer service rep (a different one than the original) acted like I mattered as a customer. He said that he would make a note of my complaint, and when I said I wanted to reschedule another phone call, he claimed that they don’t schedule specific times to call customers – that they can only call back within a few business days at random times (not that I even got a call back). Because of their Eastern-​centric hours, there was no possible way I could call them back (they no longer had the extended Monday hours). I was pretty annoyed, and the customer service rep said that he would transfer me to a manager.
I was put on hold for 4 to 5 minutes (my phone has a timer, so I know), and when someone got back to me, it was the same customer service rep, not a manager! He said, «I spoke to a manager…» Uh, what? He said he was going to TRANSFER me to a manager, not put me on hold to speak to a manager! I called him out on his deceit, and said, «So I was on hold for 5 minutes and not even transferred?!» The customer service rep replied, «It was not 5 minutes, it was really quick, no more than two minutes!» Lie #2.
After lying to me about transferring me to a manager and how long I was on hold for, the customer service rep said, «The manager said that you don’t need to speak to someone about mutual funds; you can just purchase them yourself.» Now, for those of you who have read this long ass ramble and paid attention, you’ll know that the reason I wanted to speak to someone was **so that I could get more information about mutual funds before deciding to invest or not.** I felt very dismissed.
At this point, I had had enough of all the bullshit I was going through, and threatened to withdraw all my RRSPs and transfer them to another bank since they were no longer locked into GICs. I asked the customer service rep if there was a fee to do the transfer, and instead of simply saying, «No, ING does not charge fees to transfer out RRSPs», he tried to evade my question by saying, «Other banks may have fees.» (I was not asking about other banks, I was asking about ING. And what bank charges customers to transfer money TO them?!)
Enough was enough, and I hung up.
Last week I had an appointment at Vancity (which currently has better interest rates on RRSPs than ING, by the way), and because ING does NOT charge clients a fee to transfer RRSPs out, I initiated transfer of all my RRSPs to Vancity. I am keeping my TFSA with ING (or should I say Tangerine?), though.

I don’t bank here. I was walking by and stopped in with some questions. The gentleman at the front desk was very helpful and though this bank didn’t have what I was looking for, made every effort to help. He also helped with questions about Canadian/U.S. banking in general. The area was clean and neat and the staff even thought I was a member of this bank.

terrible customer service. after sending them my check, i had a family emergency, and i asked if they could hold off on cashing the check. they said no problem, but ended up cashing it anyway and i bounced my check. they offered to put an extra $ 25 in my account, but only if i sent another check.
ok, that was one mistake, no prob. then they sent me an identity verification form, and i had to pay $ 10 to have a notary look at my ID and fill out the form. the fraction of a percent interest that you’ll get over another bank will never compensate me for the time and money ive wasted on them.
that said, i had ING in the states, and its wonderful. but please, please, please don’t give these a$$h01es your business.

I LOVE their online bank — I have a couple of accounts open with ING. The ease of transferring funds from ING to my various checking accounts (and vice versa) may be my favorite feature.
HOWEVER, having a US account doesn’t mean anything when you visit an ING branch in Vancouver! I was a little taken back. I don’t have an ATM card so I wasn’t able to withdraw any cash and the teller (or at least the person who sits at the front desk) said there wasn’t anything he could do. The accounts are not linked (US & Canada) and are treated like a whole different account.
I don’t think there’s an actual ING Bank branch in the US — so seeing one in Vancouver was pretty cool. It would have been nice to be able to do some ING banking in Vancouver. but that’s not going to happen.

I’m a TD girl, so I have no input on ING’s services or their people. But, I was lucky enough last week to see their office at a little reception that was being held in the lobby. I was pleasantly surprised by what a cool looking, albeit orange-​y interior they had. It’s modern, clean and I’d guess holds up to 50 people standing comfortably.
The manager of the branch mentioned that they rent out conference rooms, meeting spaces and this lobby for events as the try to cultivate a young and vibrant business community. I’m hoping I’ll get to come to another event sometime in the future here… just to see how another organizer runs the room.

The online bank itself is superb. For example, to open any new account you just do it online. No need to print stuff out and mail it in signed, sealed and delivered.
Add to that their regular and tax-​free savings account interest rates are always higher than the trad banks in Canada.
Go to their Web site (
) to figure out how it works but if you do need to talk to someone, the staff they have at this location are great. There’s an ATM there and the beauty of ING is if you have a joint account, the max is not $ 800 but $ 800×2 per day for withdrawals. Just use both bank cards. Plus you can yank US$ straight out of your US$ savings account without worrying about exchange rates and have the cash prior to your trip south.
One word: Forget buying their own mutual funds unless you are super conservative and are a lazy investor. I just find the performance of their various balanced funds to be underperformers across the board. Stick with ETFs or find a better 25% x 4 split mutual fund pie investment like theirs elsewhere.

Out of all the banks, ING has a really good interest rate right now (and historically) for basic savings. That’s actually not saying that much, but yes it’s better than the rest. One Monday morning I found myself in the neighborhood of the Howe St. location, so in I popped. I was instantly taken aside to open a savings account, no fuss, no muss, no appointment needed. A very smooth transaction… I just needed ID and a check from my current bank so they can link to it, enabling money transfers via net or telephone.
They are a very straight-​forward client-​oriented bank whose reps can answer all your questions and help you decide how to best shuffle about your pennies until you’re ready to start investing with the big boys, ie. emerald smuggling rings and the like.
Bonus! I got a small $ gift ($ 13, a weird arbitrary-​seeming amount but I’ll take it!) for depositing more than $ 100 to get the account started, and a free umbrella. A FREE UMBRELLA! I’m lovin’ life.