You do realize that some other banks offer similar services too, right?

I say this as someone who is also with BoA, and have been considering leaving. I know it's not easy to leave (believe me) but other banks offer the same services.

And of course, all of the other banks are nearly as corrupt as BofA.

A lot could change if we all switched to small credit unions; of course, small credit unions can't offer all the fancy featurs of a multinational (like automatic online bill pay or whatever).

As consumers, we have chosen megabanks, even if we realize they are the problem here.

> As consumers, we have chosen megabanks, even if we realize they are the problem here.

This almost seems to be a truism. Laziness wins out. But when BoA announced their plan to charge monthly debit card fees, a massive amount of people left for credit unions in a very short time, there is a limit to how much people will take. I was going to follow suit, there are a number of attractive credit unions in the Greater Seattle area, but out of laziness I decided to wait them out and see if they would actually do it. They backpedaled, and simultaneously fixed the other biggest issue I had with them. That was not showing pending transactions on my online statement. I'm still with them...

* small credit unions can't offer all the fancy featurs of a multinational (like automatic online bill pay or whatever).*

I'm with a credit union now and it offers bill pay (with lots of features). I don't know if it can be set to completely automatic since I like to check each bill prior to money leaving my account, but bills show up in my account for me to examine and I click pay. Takes about 30 seconds or so. Their service will also cut checks and mail them to people for things like rent or my current water utility that only accepts payments sent through the mail. This is included and has no additional charge. They also have great loan rates, and it's nice to deal with friendly local people.

Small community banks still exist. Mine offers online bill pay, and just about every other "fancy features" that larger banks do.

So, yeah, there are options other than huge bank or crippled credit union.

> small credit unions can't offer all the fancy featurs of a multinational (like automatic online bill pay or whatever).

I've only banked with 2 credit unions, but both offered this feature. Maybe I was just lucky, but online bill pay seems like a solved space at this point.

If not, surely that's a solid start-up idea?

I've always wondered why Mint.com doesn't offer white-label services like this to financial institutions. They've got the UX down really well and they seem poised to offer a lot of cool features in this space if they could offer a tighter integration with banks.

You could try USAA. They have all the bells and whistles (auto bill pay, check cashing app) and have great customer service and conservative lending practices.

EDIT: They have a unique organizational structure more like a co-op (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA#Legal_structure)

USAA limits passwords to 12 characters. That means they're doing something wrong for password storage.

Although they offer 2-factor auth, only the SMS option is any good. If you choose Symantec VIP, your login consists of the VIP token and your 4 digit pin, rather than the VIP token and your password. A 4 digit pin does not provide much more security than the VIP token alone. I don't understand why they buddied up with Symantec rather than implementing OATH.

I know they're a good bank, but I can't get past those technical issues.

That's not worse than BofA though, which has no two-factor auth.

BofA has SMS 2-factor. It's hidden.

  - Customer Service tab.
  - "Visit the Security Center" in the left column under Security Features
  - "View your SafePass settings" under the Online Banking menu when you expand it.
  - I assume at that point there's an "Add SafePassDevice" option.  I already have my phone added.  I remember when I added it there was a snafu and I had to call the BOA fraud hotline to get it added, but they did add it.
  - Once you have a SafePass device (sms-capable mobile), under Current SafePass settings, "change these settings" and set it to require SafePass to log in to online banking.

I don't like SMS 2-factor. People need to stop pretending that mobile networks are secure. I want something that runs autonomously on my phone (OATH, e.g. Google Authenticator), or a separate HW token for higher security. However, the choice between no 2-factor and SMS 2-factor is a no-brainer if you have an SMS allowance on your plan.

Interesting. I was under the impression that in order to get the good stuff through them, you had to be in the military.

I think you need to be in the military (or be a direct descendant of someone who was) to use the insurance, but I think banking is open to the public. I highly recommend checking them out, amazing customer service.

My local credit union has auto bill pay and it only has around ~5k members total.

They also have CD rates 3x higher than any big bank that I've seen.