I, as basically every other personal finance blogger, use ING Direct as my primary bank for savings. They have a decent, although not great interest rate, a clean and usable website, and great customer support. One of my favorite things about ING Direct though is that they’re one of the original online banks. They started out way back in 2000 and know what they’re doing. That’s why I was disappointed when I went to search for an ING Direct iPhone app.
I wasn’t even sure if they had one, but what I found was actually worse than them not having an app.
The “app” isn’t really an app. All it does is launch the iPhone’s own browser to ING Direct’s mobile site. It doesn’t do anything else – other than take up space on my screen.
In ING Direct’s defense, their mobile site (designed for devices with small screens) is pretty good. The only part I had a problem with was entering my PIN. With ING, you can’t actually type in your number. You have to click on a virtual phone-style numeric keypad. On my iPhone, this wasn’t super easy because my finger covers up about three numbers at the same time.
But still, it’s puzzling why a completely online bank would put out a half-assed “app” to their mostly technologically proficient customers. The Apple App Store has been in business for almost two years now – that’s plenty of time for an Internet focused bank to create a decent application. Even more interesting is that ING Direct knows that it’s crappy. They put a little message in the bottom of the screen that reads “We’ll be launching a new, full app soon.”
What are your thoughts about ING’s useless app? Am I being too hard on the company?
