First Round of Bills with ING Electric Orange
August 03, 2007
ING Electric Orange is the great new checking service from ING that provides you a kick-ass checking account with great interest and introductory cash-back. The catch? No paper checks. Well, here in America that makes life a little difficult since very few businesses accept (in a rational way) credit-card based payments for monthly bills. So, what's a boy to do? Well, the ING Electric Orange account takes care of you by allowing you to order pre-written checks and have them mailed out to you.
I've written about my Electric Orange account before, but now our first round of bills at the house are rolling in. The process of ordering pre-written checks has been pretty good so far. The checks take roughly three days from date of ordering to arrive at your house (or to the business) and then you can do what you need to with them after that. There's two downsides to this approach. The first is that the money is immediately withdrawn from your account, even before the check is sent. This can be an annoyance when you have a recipient who takes their time when cashing a check (*ahem* Me *ahem*).
The other problem is that the check is mailed addressed to the recipient of the check. So, if you have strict mail-people or a forward setup you will have issues getting your check. Specifically, we had our rent check mailed to us (and addressed to The Manager) but it ended up being forwarded to The Manager without any notice to us. That freaked us out a good bit, but we got everything settled.
So, is it worth the hassle? I think so. For the price of having to think ahead and sort out the mail forwarding thing, I get to earn a decent amount of interest and cash back. How much? For somewhere around $1000 of spending and a pretty consistent $200 balance, I've gotten back $19 in interest and cash-back rewards (real cash, not stupid gift certificates). I also get great integration with my ING Savings account which allows me to easily transfer money back and forth at the drop of a hat.
So, thanks ING! You've made saving worth it again.
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3 Comments
| Tagged: ING, Finance
Andy 2007/08/03
I don't know. Can you really trust a company named after a suffix? Not to mention the lion. You have to get in the car!
Jordan T. Cox 2007/08/06
Well, Draz, James and I do!
SingleGuyMoney 2007/08/11
I just recently opened an Electric Orange account too. I love it so far and have not had any problems. I have numerous ATMs to use.
I've written a detailed timeline of my opening experience at my blog: www.1guymoney.blogspot.com