Quality Service, Quality People, Quality...
Written: Jun 18 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quality of services and staff, price, Realtime website updates for debit transactions.
Cons: No automatic updates of transaction entries from USAA's Web BillPay website into Quicken.
The Bottom Line: They have been consistently fair, reasonable, and customer focused. I can't say that about any other bank, insurance, credit card, or financial institution I've ever been a customer of.
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| billo255's Full Review: USAA |
Along with all of the other positive comments that have been made here regarding their banking, credit cards, auto insurance, auto loans, etc. which I agree with, the only two other items I can add is that the quality of their services and people has been consistent and consistently improved and they listen!! Like most who deal with them, it's an out of state bank. However, when I have checking accounts locally I rarely found a need to go into a bank anyway as long as I had direct deposit for my paycheck and had access to an ATM and the Internet.
I've always liked being able to pay my bills online. A long, long time ago when CheckFree was a standalone product I tried them and then switched to the Quicken/CheckFree integrated version when it came out. I always felt more comfortable with having everything integrated within Quicken so when USAA offered their free version of their online Web BillPay service I wasn't too thrilled. However, after using it for the past six months or so I found that I like the fact that I can access it from anywhere I can get to the Internet, that it's pretty straight forward and easy to use once you set things up correctly, and it's free if you're a member and bank with USAA.
Since I have a couple of checking accounts and credit cards and loans setup in Quicken I like to keep it updated so I've got one place to see where everything is. USAA's regular website has a place to automatically update Quicken with USAA's credit card and banking transactions. Any other accounts, such as loans and the Web BillPay transactions aren't totally automated. With loans, you can still download and import qif files into Quicken so that's not a major issue although it would be nice to have the ability to press one button and have all accounts updated.
However, with Web BillPay, its one major flaw in this area is that there is no automated way to update your Quicken transactions from the Web BillPay website. You either have to manually enter your transactions into Quicken or, since Quicken doesn't support qif files any longer for banking, you can download a Quicken qif file into a dummy account and then transfer the transactions into your checkbook ledger. Since the selection of which records from Web BillPay is done manually by selecting the transactions, there's the risk of accidentally downloading duplicate entries into your transaction register.
Given that USAA has made many positive changes to their website I'm going to assume that since the Web BillPay site is relatively new that it’s a work in progress and USAA will focus more attention on it in the future.
Regarding the comment I made above about USAA listening. I've had only a couple of negative experiences with a USAA representative that I can remember, and dozens and dozens of positive ones. On almost every call that I've made to USAA I’ve taken the opportunity to make some kind of a request regarding their website. My most frequent request was that USAA provide a "live" update online so that, when I use my debit card, I wouldn't have to wait for two or three days (over a weekend or holiday for example) before I'd see current transaction information on the USAA website. Someone in an earlier post had mentioned that not having that available as a con. Well, without any fanfare that I'm aware of, USAA listened. I've noticed over the past few weeks that transactions I made using my debit card were showing up on the weekend. Today I had to transfer some money to my daughter who lives out of state using Western Union and make a payment. Out of curiosity, I checked USAA online about a 1/2 hour after I'd completed both transactions and both transactions were there with the appropriate reduction in my balance. The thing that I really like about this is that even though I've had an extremely small number of problems with being over billed, I can go into the website and confirm that what I'm expecting to pay is what I've been charged.
This now makes the electronic version of the USAA website duplicate what most people do manually when they write a check or use their debit card. Since I'm notorious for not entering things into checkbook registers and for losing receipts, having it done for me the way it's supposed to be done is greatly appreciated and one less thing I don't have to worry that I forgot to do... again.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
billo255
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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