It’s been roughly a month since I posted about switching banks from Bank of America and I can happily say that my first direct deposit from my work into my new Schwab account happened on 2/1/2012. It was a little harder than anticipated and I still have a few steps to go, but I wanted to walk through a few things I had to do and some milestones when making the switchover.
- It took roughly a week from when I sent the paper application in to when I had an account number. I was notified via email that I had an account number and I called them to get a login to online banking.
- My initial deposit took almost a week to process. I found it faster to login to online banking, link my ING savings, and transfer a few bucks to the account.
- Access to online bill pay, printing and mailing debit cards and mailing me checks all hinged on an initial deposit into the account. Since there’s no local bank and I didn’t want to setup direct deposit BEFORE I had bill pay setup transferring a few bucks in via a linked account was the best option. Again, it took about 5 days to link, transfer, etc.
- Mobile deposits – one of the coolest features of this account is the ability to deposit from your smartphone. I requested this as soon as I got the account access online and it took about three days before they came back to me. I wasn’t “rejected” but I was told that I need to wait until I start using the account, have direct deposit, etc. before they can approve it. I’ve made a note to follow up on February 15th and will keep doing this monthly until it’s activated.
- Debit cards arrived on the 7th of January and checks around the same time.
All in all it’s been pretty smooth so far. I’m going to do all my bill pay manually this month to make sure it’s all set up right (other than the bills I have setup to autopay via my credit card) and then I will re-automate those. I will report back in March with progress and will hopefully be done with the switchover.