Emigrant Direct released their new site today… and promptly got hammered by the millions of people eagerly waiting to type in their 10-digit access code. I finally just got through.
Most importantly, with the new website you also get a different account number! This is extremely important for those that have externally linked their Emigrant account with other 3rd parties, such as TreasuryDirect or credit card bill-payment systems, and they most likely possibly won’t work anymore. (Added: This is per my discussion with a single rep. People have been getting differing answers.) Transfers initiated at Emigrant’s website will still work.
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Wow, thanks for the heads up. That’s pretty poor execution by ED though (changing acct numbers and overloaded website).
I’ve always been happy with emigrantdirect and I instead of chasing rates with hsbcdirect or other online savings account, I stuck it out with emigrantdirect and they always came through.
The site’s not even up anymore! You know someone at EmigrantDirect is getting chewed out right now.
ED continues to show its customer they’re on top of things. yehaww 🙂
Site seems to be down now.. 🙁
Guess i’ll do my code later.
So I’m guessing that my ING account is no longer connected to Emigrant (I set this up back in the day before ING clamped down). Oh well, guess there’s no real need for Emigrant anymore — it used to just serve as a conduit between ING and HSBC.
Great. On Friday, I initiated an ETF withdrawl from my EmigrantDirect account for XETrade, to send money to Canada. With any luck it will go through. If not, what do you folks think, should I ask Emigrant Direct for the $15 non-payment fee if this happens?
Argh! Dealing with emigrant has been a very frustrating situation. They couldn’t open an account joint with my wife, as she doesn’t have a social security number (but does have an ITIN, which the IRS considers just as good on a 1099-INT). Some service, for a bank that says they were founded by immigrants, for immigrants!
And now, they go changing my account around like this without warning.
Does the site mention anywhere that the account number has changed and the impact thereof? I know it has, am just wondering if they have acknowledged the change. IF and this is a big IF, they implemented the account change properly, then they created a cross-reference between the new accounts and the old accounts. SO, possibly, the old account numbers may still work. Try transferring a buck from ING to ED using the old account number and see what happens.
No, no mention on the site. I just noticed that my last 4 numbers were different. I called and they said that they can’t ‘guarantee’ any transfers work other than their own funds transfer system. I tried to call again to speak with another person, and got a busy signal.
I haven’t actually tried any transfers myself or had any rejections, so I will change my wording from ‘most likely’ to ‘possibly’.
Jonathan, I have a question. How many external links can we have now? Formerly, it is two. With their website re-designed. Do we have more? Where can I find this info? Thanks.
Account number change is crazy. Now i made a purchase for a T-Bill for 26 week which was auctioned today for TreasuryDirect. I looked at the auction it has my old account number on it. Does any one know what i can do? Does it fail when they send it for purchase on 27th? I tried to change my bank info on TDirect wit my new emigrant direct account number. It listed all my T-Bills saying do you want to update this account on all the T-Bill , i said yes. It changed maturity destination to my new Emmigrant account number. The problem is it did not update that information on this one T-Bill that was auctioned today. Grrr… No idea what is safest way to get this info.
Can i cancel my aution on TDirect? I am ok to loose this acution , i just do not want to end-up paying some kind of fine for failing to have my account info correct.
I called EmigrantDirect to ask my new account number. The representative told me that all 3rd party transactions in the future should go through using the old account number forever as far as he knows. He said it was taught to them as part of their training that they keep the old account numbers around. He says he sees old account numbers from mergers which he doesn’t recognize.
He said while it is still a good idea to update your bills with the new account number, don’t expect bills to bounce. I will be changing my account number though just in case.
did they inform customers? I don’t recall getting a notice about this. DANGIT!
nothing but good things to say about my experiences with ED.
After the alleged leak of email addresses to spammers, I have only $1 with ED now.
The site is still down as of 5:13am CST this morning. They really need to get this resolved, or go back to the original site.
Holy cow, this recent outage and “site maintenance” has been unacceptable. I work in IT, and this kind of snafu results in more than a mere slap on the wrist for the project manager.
ED’s site was down from July 21 through July 24. Yesterday I was able to reach the site, but could not log in — various help pages and such displayed JSP and other Java code errors.
I was very fortunate to have transferred out a large amount of my savings in order to start a 5.5% CD with another bank before this past weekend.
Today I went in to log in, when I got a message stating the site was down due to “extreme volume”. Refreshing a few minutes later resulted in a Cannot load page… browser message.
Yes, this is just one of the tradeoffs when dealing with online banks. But it’s 2006, not 1999.
Well it’s back up, and working pretty well I might add!
Thanks for the info. It seems like they did not mention that the account number is changed at all.
Don’t konw if my direct deposit to ED still work with the old number.
XETrade, a currency trading site, has confirmed that they successfully did an EFT withdrawl today/yesterday using my old account number. I’ll update XETrade to use my new account number, but at least one EFT has gone through using the account numbers
Update 2:
Ok, I got someone else. This makes sense – Since they allow direct deposit, all the old account numbers and routing number combos still have to make since, otherwise all these direct deposits will bounce (bad). Thus, any type of withdrawals using these combos should work as well, even though they aren’t officially supported by Emigrant still work.
The direct deposit explanation works well for me, because on their FAQ they even encourage you to DD into their account.
Thanks Gavin for the data point going out as well.
When I try to log on the site asks me for a security code which I am supposed to have recieved in mail. I did not recieve any document from emigrant direct stating my security code. Did any of you face similar situation?
Wow. Emigrant is down yet again. I’m glad I don’t have a ton of money in there. By the time I cash in my short term CD’s I’m sure they’ll have their act together.
I wonder if the marketing department talked to the IT department. Any mass mailing that drives every single one of your customers to your website on the same day is doomed to fail.
Spoke ED and Treasury direct. When you give your new ED account number make sure you give 10 digit. New ED interface is displaying 12 digits with first 2 digits as ZEROS
So if you see 00XXXXX XXXXX, give 00XXXXX XXXXX. I wasted 1 hour getting this right on my Treasury account.
Lessons:
1) TreasuryDirect is much better at handling this issue they checked with ED and removed ZEROs and sent me an email saying why they did.
2) ED is bad because they failed to inform on all these changes.
3) Being a software engineer I am speculating that some guy decided to have 12 digits as database/data type in the code but actual account number is only10 digits and UI guy did not care/informed about it and displayed all the digits?
Ignore my third point , just had to say it but not much of value as it is speculation.
Phew finally all my account are updated with the new correct account number.
Thanks for postings on this blog.
Do you have to change the account numbers? Has anyone tried transferring money (ING to ED)??? Please post if you have and if it went through.
Thanks, A.
Just wondering, though: I had updated my TreasuryDirect (TD) account with the new 12-digit EmigrantDirect (ED) number, and TD accepted it, no problem.
I just went back in to TD to delete the 2 leading zeroes, and that went through smoothly, too.
Also, you say you spoke with TD. I’ve not been able to find its number on the site. What is the TD number? And is that the customer service number?
Dave the H., who will be withdrawing most of the money he has in ED and put it into HSBC because this snafu makes him nervous about ED’s capabilities for doing online banking
Quick update, regarding old account numbers.
My TreasuryDirect purchase of a 28-day T-Bill from my EmigrantDirect account went through with no problems today, even though that transaction used my old account number.
But I should still change the account number in TD to the correct (aka, new) ED one, right?
Hi Dave the H,
Treasury direct cutomer service number:
(304) 480-8783 from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm, Eastern Time (Monday – Friday). They will ask you lot of secuirty qustions before they help you with anything.
Hi Peter,
I am not sure if you have to change the account numbers , but ig you do please use 10 digits. I am not sure how long the old numbers of supported. I have one pending Treasury transaction on ED with old number which i should know today if there are any issues. But based what others found ED is going to support old numbers, not sure how long.
You can get your new account number after you log in by clicking on “Account” and then “Preferences”. It will bring up your new account number and the accounts that you have linked to Emigrant.
Gary
Looks like amoung other changes, Emigrant has raised the maximum number of external account links from 2 to 4. The procedure to add a link to external account has changed as well. You click on “Accounts” and then “Funding”. Then you will see a button that says “Add Funding Account”. You register information about the new account that you want to link. Look’s like they then deposit small amounts to the external account that you have to verify after you see it hit the external account. In addition, they require you to send them a voided check on the external account that you want to link.
Gary
Because of what I read here and on other financial message boards and blogs earlier this week, I waited until today to log on to ED.
Took me an hour to reconfigure my account, as the site kept freezing up, causing me to have to repeatedly start over.
After I finished, I tried to call customer service to clarify whether the new account number is ten or twelve digits, and whether my external links need to be changed. Got a busy signal. Repeatedly.
None of this increases my confidence level in ED.
Update: On Wednesday, I scheduled both an online deposit and online debit to my Emigrant Direct account using my ING Direct account, linked previously with the old account number.
Today, both the debit and deposit showed up fine. So logically everything else should be fine. I have no idea if this will work indefinitely, but I would imagine it should unless otherwise notified.
Last week we had posted about our apprehensions about an online transaction to our old account number [ Dream Savings a/c ] at Emigrant Direct. We kept our fingers crossed and prayed that the transaction went across without incurring any bouncing fees. Well that is what has happened by God’s grace !
The old account numbers at Emigrant Direct are still working though we are not sure for how long. It would be a safe bet to update the account numbers (to the new ones issued by Emigrant Direct) for online bill pays or ACH transfers. We do appreciate Emigrant’s customer service who had assured us that the transaction will go through and will be reflected online within 3 business days.
FIRE Finance, leave your superstitions out of it.