EDIT: "The Bancorp Bank", the bank Simple farms out the actual banking to, has been around since 2000[0]. Simple _might_ have an excuse for screwing up like this if this was all their own system, but an established bank doesn't.
Edit: it's exactly like trying to reinvent Twitter by consuming their APIs, and we've all seen how that goes
My current setup is a cash-back credit card, with the bills for it paid from a high-yield savings account. I net close to 2% cash back on the card, and around .8% APR on the savings account, and pay exactly $0 in fees. Based on the language on Simple's site, I'm guessing the APR on their savings is closer to .25% or so, and they definitely don't offer cash back on the use of their card.
Sure, the tools they offer are nice, but my credit card provider also has pretty nice spending analysis tools (that don't require an iOS device), and lots of other providers are adding or improving spending tools as well.
What am I missing?
Within any start-up there are always differing opinions on the level of reliability required. My first real job in IT was with the Dutch division of the Chase Mannhattan bank, they made it pretty clear upon hiring me that they did not mind hiring me into a responsible position as young as I was but that my first fuck-up would also be my last. I'm not sure if they would actually follow through on that promise but it certainly made me a bit more wary and more responsible. The fact that I ended up leaving of my own accord means that their threat probably had its intended effect.
When you're in the payment chain, whether as an IPSP, a bank or something else that directly affects peoples income and ability to function in society you have no excuse other than 'meteor fragments took out all three of our datacenters'.
Stuff is up, check-totals are at '0', transactions are never lost. 24 hours, 365 (of 366) days per year.
If you can't do that don't bother playing.
The bank I'm with (Rabobank in nl) lost a lot of respect from me (after building that up for 2 decades) when they blamed a bunch of down time on 'hackers'. What bugged me even more than the fact that they were down was the fact that they wanted to blame another party for being down.
The one thing I'll leave a little bit of room for is capacity issues during the holiday shopping spree, but even that is pretty bad form and indicative of very bad planning.
Judging by the post the error lies with Simple's partner, unfortunately for Simple customers will likely not care about that at all. To them their simple card doesn't work when they expect it to work.
I hope for simple they'll be able to fix this very quickly.
It feels a bit like when the general public got used to see computer fails, and "the computer is never wrong" mental image became a "it crashes from times to times, you just have to reboot" one.
I didn't say that those things don't happen. I said that they are not acceptable. The fact that others fuck up does not give you an excuse to fuck up.
These are exactly the kind of discussions that I was hinting at above.
With major banks like BofA, Citibank, and others, I've had…
• credit cards often disabled for fraud-alert false alarms
• check deposits sometimes subject to mysterious fund-availability delays
• individual ATM clusters or whole ATM networks down for short periods
• account information and ATM withdrawals sometimes unavailable during 'system maintenance' hours (often early Sunday AM)
• a check erroneously bounced by a major bank (BofA) when both available-by-rule funds and enrolled 'overdraft protection' would have each been individually able to cover the check amount
• my ATM card unusable while traveling to the exotic third-world locale of Ottawa, Canada due to some sort of more-than-one-day network security issue
Stuff happens, to banks also. Cut Simple some slack.
Stuff happens to banks and then people switch to other banks, especially when you're a new player.
If my bank did this to me I'd be gone instantly, I almost did just over their inability to keep telebanking working through a denial of service attack, and then blaming it on the hackers. All my cards (credit, debit across several companies and private accounts) link back to the same bank. If that bank does not do its job I can't do mine.
ATM and pos worked fine during that period, if it had not I'd be gone for sure.
If banking is that important to you, then perhaps you ought to consider redundant providers? I mean, that's what you do with connectivity. you don't rely on one provider with a good sla; no, you get two providers.
The fact that they're being proactive about their status updates, and transparently honest, helps a lot, too.
A relationship with a bank is a lot like a relationship with a doctor: bedside manner is sometimes the most important element to patient (customer) satisfaction - sometimes even surpassing outcomes, as long as it's not too serious.
I wonder if it's related to the leap second bug discovered in July. Apparently, a some popular NTP servers incorrectly sent out leap seconds at midnight. Even if it's not that specific issue, I bet the root cause is a time-keeping bug.
If my bank went down losing access to my money, I would be naked, I don't always have cash and money is our oxygen is this society, a absolute essential. Hopefully the downtime for Simple will be short, but if they had 100 million people using them as their main bank and this happened, you could expect mass exodus the next day.
The only time I have lost access to my money was a few years ago when VISA or MASTERCARD went down (or both), with them you don't have a choice and everyone lost access to their money, but if ever just one bank went down it wouldn't turn out good at all.
