Why I'm leaving Neo

Community Lounge
1

Hey folks,

Quick note before I leave.

I’ve been a huge fan of Neo for a long time, and I still am. I love the team, technology and the company.

But I am also a user who is using a product, and the friction isn’t worth it.

You changed your payment provider. That happens.

But now I have to change all of my preauthorized payments.

And it’s incredibly annoying. I keep getting endless reminders from Neo to do this and even got a call, which is helpful.

But changing payments in Canada is a nightmare. You know this. And you still made everyone do it. Maybe you had no other option. Fine.

I just want to walk you through my experience so you can understand where I’m coming from.

I have a mortgage with TD, and their system is extremely dumb.

All I need to do is change a couple numbers.

And I can’t do it online.

They have online banking and an app, but they are dumb. I can view all my details except the payment details, and there is nowhere to change payment details online or in the app.

The only options are to call or VISIT A BRANCH.

I’m not in Canada.

I tried calling them but the calls don’t seem to work from outside Canada.

There is no chat option or email.

I can’t go to the branch.

I know they must have some humans somewhere with computers and email, but I don’t know where they are and how to reach them.

I don’t want to have missed payments because of your payment transitions, so I’m spending a good chuck of my day just trying to figure this out. And I probably will, but I will remember the experience, and the experience is not great.

Second one is condo fees.

They have a portal that doesn’t let you change payment info. It has a section with forms but no payment forms are available.

I emailed them and eventually got a fillable pdf that I can fill out online, but I can’t sign it online because their system is also dumb.

I can fill it out online.

But I can’t sign it online.

So now I’m in Mexico in a small beach town that barely has internet trying to find a printer so I can print, sign, scan, and send back a form.

I call this experience a pain in the ass, and this is the most anti-Neo move thing Neo could have done.

Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.

I have to switch everything anyway.

I’ll just switch it to another bank instead.

That part is actually straightforward.

What’s weird is this:

It’s easy to cancel Neo.

For some reason, it’s hard to keep it.

That shouldn’t be how this works.

2

I mean they have been telling us about this for a long time. It is a serious PITA, absolutely, but have you been in Mexico for 6 months? Your choice is your choice but the biggest part of this inconvenience is that you are in a small Mexico town with very little internet trying to get this done 2 weeks before it is is set to be enforced. With constant reminders from Neo for the last (I’m just guestimating here) 6 months. Your frustration is yours to own. They have given us ample time.

3

I have no issue with the communication. Neo has been very proactive and communicated it well.

That’s not the point.

The question is: why does using a digital bank require a printer?

Whether it’s months ahead of time or last moment, I’d still have to go through the same process regardless of my location.

I’m not signing up for anything new. I’m not changing products. I’m just updating a couple numbers because of a backend change I didn’t initiate.

When something that simple turns into a logistical project, that’s where trust starts to erode.

4

Its not Neo thats making this difficult though. Your digital bank doesnt influence how your different bills accept account changes. I completely understand that either way you would have had to do it, but ya gotta admit it would be easier if you were at home.

5

Of course it does. This isn’t the first time Neo changed banking providers. The move first from Concentra to People’s Bank was seamless and didn’t require users to do anything at all.

A well-designed product is easy to use from anywhere.

If you had to design this payment transition experience from scratch with the user in mind, would you design it this way?

6

I feel you and have you tried TextNow https://www.textnow.com/? It provides you free call to TD without roaming fees.

Have you tried PDFgear https://www.pdfgear.com/? You will be able to sign digitally without printer or scanner.

7

No, I haven’t. I managed to figure out TD, but thanks for the suggestion. I don’t know what I was charged because my Canadian telco is about as good as my Canadian banks. They had many different numbers to try. None of them worked correctly from the app because their genius coders didn’t format the country code properly so it wasn’t recognized as a Canadian number but as a foreign number that starts with 1 (not +1). When I copied the number manually and reentered it correctly it worked.

I will try to sort out the PDF tomorrow.

8

Changing my PADs was annoying, but took me like two seconds. Seems like the configuration of payments you’re making and the fact that you put it off until you were in Mexico have compounded the problem.

Switch if you want to switch, but don’t blame Neo for the parts that are out of their control.

9

I’m concerned about reading this. I haven’t heard anything about having to change our pre-auth payment set ups. Zero. Where do I even go to see if this affects us?

10

Hi Irmie, please don’t worry! The changes to PADs did not effect every customer. Those who were effected have been notified over the last 6 months through email, app, etc. If any of your payments were effected you would have heard about it.

11

I don’t like comparing WS to Neo but both businesses shared a similar change in their banking system.

It happened to WealthSimple when they changed their banking model from a single bank to escrow deposits to multiple banks.

Neo gave us a plenty of time to adjust. Neo also changed their banking model from banking to one institution to deposit money in escrow to multiple banking partners.

Both WS and Neo advised their customers in advance to change banking information. It is not like Neo were making changes suddenly without notice. We got months to make the changes

12

I figured it out!

I didn’t even know WS migrated btw, never had to change anything.