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Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

I really like Ally. I was a little hesitant about them based on their GM past, but now I've switched I'd never go back to a brick and mortar.

People always ask me the same questions: Q: How do I get money out if there are no ATMs? A: I use any ATM, Ally refunds the fee, so even those sleazy but oh-so-convienent ATMs are great.

Q: What if there's a problem? A: When is the last time you saw your bank manager? I never spoke to mine at BofA. Whenever I had anything more than a trifling issue, the teller directed me to call the BofA phoneline anyway. I may as well endrun the whole hassle and talk directly to Ally (who also have very quick wait times).

The only thing Ally doesn't do yet is scanning checks. I haven't got a physical check for a while now, but if I do, I put it into my BofA account (which is otherwise entirely dormant) and have Ally debit it out.

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Ally is rolling out the eCheck deposit feature: http://community.ally.com/straight-talk/2011/04/ally-bank-in...

In the meantime, you can simply mail them your checks, using their free pre-stamped envelopes. It only takes a couple of days for your money to show up. Faster and easier than going through a brick and mortar bank.

If you have high balances, you should consider "bank of internet". The name sounds like a joke, but they are similar to Ally in terms of services, but offer money market rates on the checking account. I use them, and don't need a savings/money market account, so it really simplifies things.

They also don't charge foreign exchange fees, and their method for computing atm fees is the amount mod $5. When I was living in china, I actually made money every time I withdrew from the ATM, because the USD amount would be $83, and I would get $3 refund for non-existant ATM fees.

amount mod $5

How does that work at ATMs that only give out $20s? n20 mod 5 is always zero. Unless, of course, "amount" here refers to the withdrawal amount plus* the ATM owner's fee?

Yes. The bank doesn't actually know what the ATM fees are. They just see cash withdrawal for 102. Some ATMs send two transactions, but many just bundle it as one transaction.

For a while international wire transfers required being in a physical bank at BoA, but they've recently (last couple of years) added it to their 'ebanking' site. The frustrating part of this was that their system operated on Central Standard Time... which sucks on the west coast because you have a very short window to do the transfer in (between bank opening in PST timezone and 2pm CST (aka noon PST)... and the BoA closest to me opened at 10am PST...).

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