Online Bank Accounts: 4 Reasons to Avoid Them

Don’t get me wrong: online bank accounts have got their advantages. They offer us services that we simply couldn’t have dreamt about with traditional bank accounts. Higher returns and ease of opening one are just but a couple of them. But let’s face it; these benefits come with pretty high costs. 

Before you rush to open an online bank account, take a look at the following disadvantages and see whether you are willing to trade them off for its benefits:

Online bank accounts make it hard for you to spend, especially when dealing with offline transactions. If you intend to have an online account to be holding “liquid cash,” then it is the wrong choice for you. The only way you can benefit from this limitation is if you are looking for a place where you can deposit money and overcome your desire to buy impulsively. Otherwise, you’ll be the typical frustrated account holder.

 Being an account holder is not all about depositing and withdrawing money from your account. It involves being treated well by the bank staff. You need to have a place to rush to if you have a problem with your account. The problem with an online bank is that you are likely to receive poor customer service and you may end up wasting a lot of time. In case the bank does not have a proper internal system, you don’t have a chance of sorting them out; for example, If you receive bad customer service from a teller, you can easily demand to see his/her supervisor to explain your problem.

What If you receive poor service from an online teller? Start a hate blog?

This problem is also present with the physical banks. The only difference is that when systems go down with you local bank or credit union, you can easily go to a different branch and get your problems sorted out.

Again, some banks have manual backups that allow for limited transactions in case the main system breaks down.

What do online banks have?

If your online bank account goes down, you have no choice to wait as “we try to fix the problem.” No matter how much they regret the inconvenience caused, you definately won't  like the experience.

 Despite the fact that internet transactions are usually real-time, e-checks take a bit more time to clear compared with OTC checks. This mainly has to do with the increased security threats relating to internet transactions. This means that as traditional banks find news ways of clearing your check faster, online bank accounts strive for ways of holding you check longer -– for security reasons.

There is also a huge delay in depositing money with online bank accounts. If what you want are fast transactions that can’t wait, online accounts are simply not the way to go.