Simple lays off 33 employees as top executives depart banking company | Hacker News Reader

Simple lays off 33 employees as top executives depart banking company

geekwire.com

14 pointssciurus7 comments

The problem for me with Simple is that whole they tend to be very good at providing support or technology, but are pretty bad at being a bank. They're unreasonably restrictive with regard to using your debit card abroad, and the lack of a checkbook is, while not a frequent inconvenience, one that always seems to be problematic at the worst possible times.

That their solution is "act less like a bank" seems to me that they have got things horribly backwards.

As a customer of simple I cannot agree with this statement more. This is disheartening news for me.

I've tried for the past few years to use them as my primary bank but it's actually unusable in that regard. Lately I've been asking myself what they're actually good at and it seems like the answer is mostly for providing prompt customer support to work around the issues that they're imposing on me in the first place by not being a real bank. I'm now slowly trying to transition away from them to something like Ally which seems to at least have some visible benefits.

I was a super early adopter and couldn't agree more. I was also pretty young at the time and really only had that one checking account as a source of money, and their failures at being a bank really screwed me over. I can remember being in line trying to pay for $200 worth of groceries and getting declined (despite having well over that available in my checking account). The reason was eventually cited to me as a "technical glitch" after I had to call their after-hours "emergency line" and wait for a callback standing next to my groceries for a half hour.

The mobile experience was really great though, and I like that they automatically accounted for things like tips in your available balance to give a clearer picture of available funds.

> pretty bad at being a bank

I can echo this sentiment. My issues revolved around them reporting an incorrect balance to me on several occasions. Support could tell me the correct balance, but I mean come on, my balance is the one feature they need to get right.

Still a customer though, and things have been better lately.

I've happily used Capital One 360 (neé ING Direct) for the better part of a decade at this point. It seems to provide all the same benefits as Simple (especially no fees for anything ever), while being better at being a bank.

And their web experience, which up until recently seemed to be stuck in 2002, has improved since the Capital One acquisition.

I was a Simple user for a couple of years back when it was invite only. It was pretty good, but I wish they'd focus on providing nice tech on top of existing bank infrastructure. For instance, license out their nice UIs and budgeting tools to other banks and help with integrations and such, since most banks have atrocious web banking apps. Or integrate with Plaid and provide a single transaction aggregation and budgeting tool that looks exactly like Simple's current interface. I would pay for that.

I love Simple, but definitely need a backup bank as well. I use their debit card for most purchases and love the real-time alerts. Also, love how they break down purchases.

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