I’ve used a couple of other online banking and investing apps, as well as other financial apps such as those for credit cards or loan accounts. When compared to those apps,I have found ally’s has been underwhelming, confusing, and frustrating at times. For rhe most part, I had found the user interfaces for the other apps very intuitive, easy to navigate, and have small and seemingly insignificant features that are taken for granted until you use an app that doesn’t have them. Such features include buying fractional shares of securities, without which investing in companies such as Berkshire Hathaway (stock currently valued around $450,000/share) becomes impossible to the common investor. Another capability missing from the app is the ability to manage external accounts used to fund your ally accounts - instead, there is a message that says to visit their website to manage your accounts, and while they provide the URL of the website, they could easily provide a link within that message that would take you directly to the site instead of having users exit the app, navigate to their web browser, and then manually enter the URL.Despite how I feel about the app itself, I enjoy ally’s services. This is the only reason that I am leaving this review, in hopes that it will be viewed by the powers that be within the ally organization and that they will take action to overhaul the app.

This app and bank used to be great. At some point in 2022 the app and bank started having issues. The most egregious problem I have had is, after signing in the app say “you have no accounts at Ally bank “. Depending on the situation this can be terrifying. Luckily closing the app and trying again later has brought back my accounts. No exactly confidence inspiring. Often Face ID fails to work. Sometimes it fails to invoke a Face ID check forcing me to hit the Face ID button. Sometimes it performs the Face ID verification but never unlocks the app. Fortunately this can also usually be fixed by closing the app, waiting a while and trying again. When. I can actually get it to authenticate the apps responsiveness is painfully slow. The account screen can take a long time to populate data. I have seen this behavior on my iPhone 13 pro when on excellent WiFi or cellular networks. This also happens on my iPad Pro and my wife’s iPhone. On all these devices we access other services and financial institutions without issue. I suspect that Ally made a change to their back office servers that is causing these problems but that is just speculation. I have lost trust in Ally after being a customer for many years. I opened up another account at a local account because I wasn’t comfortable having the bulk of my assets at Ally any more. This used to be a great bank. I hope they fix their issues.

We opened this account for the high yield savings. Transferring money between institutions when you’re ready to spend your savings takes several days (that’s frustrating when you’re doing construction on your home). Everyone we’ve ever spoken to has been kind, but there seems to be a disconnect between the people on the phone and the people managing account security. Our accounts have been locked (without us knowing) multiple times after answering all security questions, confirming change of address after a big move, and confirming wire transfer amounts for our home purchase. These things were resolved after phone calls, but they should’ve never happened in the first place. Ally is an online bank. It’s supposed to be easy and convenient, yet I find that they don’t trust their own security measures, and I end up spending my time on the phone jumping through all of the security questions repeatedly. If you just want the savings, it’s great. But when you’re ready to spend, plan ahead and do a bulk transfer of the funds you plan to spend so you’re not stuck waiting for Ally to release your money. (Example: It’s Wednesday, the 8th and I just requested a transfer to my regular bank. My money won’t show up in my external account until Tuesday, the 14th because of a Monday holiday. Ally claims to be 24/7 but their transfer times prove otherwise.)

I have had multiple issues with this app over the past few weeks. I had card controls on my debit card from a few years back and forgot it was locked and tried to withdraw money - this got blocked as expected but wasn’t an issue since I remembered I could unlock it through the app. And even got a notification about it saying I need to unlock it.However, when I went to the app I realize the option for card controls has disappeared entirely so I call in - maybe I missed it. After standard troubleshooting to make sure I wasn’t the issue they Eventually they had me read every menu option and confirmed it wasn’t on me. I asked them to send me a new card with a new number because the whole thing made me feel like their security was a joke seeing as the controls weren’t validated before release either… so 2 weeks go by and I get my card and call the number to activate it. After verifying my and the cards info via the phone prompts it has an issue and again I’m back on with support telling me something is wrong on their end and they wanted to set up a temporary pin but if the phone has failed already why would I trust the same prompt to update the pin. Software has bugs and I accept that. However, banking software is supposed to be better and run through more tests to make sure this type of scenario can’t occur. I am so annoyed at this point I’m likely giving up on ally in lieu of another bank.