I am not a rocket scientist so the easier the better. I find things easy to find, easy to move money between accounts etc. the only issue I have with them has to do with credit line. I buy and sell a lot of antique coins which means balances move up and down on my credit cards and checking balances. I moved some of my business over to both credit and checking because they gave me a pretty good interest rate and a good limit. well I have never missed a payment or been late on a credit cart, car, house payment, etc. I ran the card up to within a thousand of the limit then the following month I aid it down to under half of the limit. I went to use the card to pay an auction and the card declined. I called and they said it would put me over my limit. I told them no and she said” are you aware your limit was decreased by over half. So no warning and no reason they dropped my limit. Never got a reason and the calls I made to them netted the old stuff your mouth with crushed crackers and try to talk routine. Basically they pull you in every way they can and then change the rules. Nothing changed on my end all payments current and my income even went up. So after having the account less then 6 months this. Now they are locked into the interest for a year if that changes for the worst, I will pay them off, close the account and use another bank. For those of you that read this, let’s see how long this negative stays on my response before it gets cut and only my positive statement is here. So if you read this then check this post in a week or so and see if it only smells of sweet flowers and bunny hugs.

I’ve been an Upgrade customer for about a year and a half. I had been working on raising my credit score by paying down my credit cards for YEARS! But I finally needed to get serious as my retirement was anything but easy! I looked into Upgrade and they had a very attractive rate for a personal loan that would pay off the credit cards in 3 years with a much lower interest rate than I had expected! Paid off all my debt, but now needed a new car! Got a great hybrid that was just 3 yrs old and with low mileage and because of my good credit score, was able to get nearly the same rate on the car on a 5 year loan. Then, a big surprise… my credit rating went up again! And now I needed a short-term bridge loan to help me finish remodeling my house after a fire and was able to get another personal loan to help with that! I’m still paying all my bills on time and my credit rate keeps rising as I have not used my credit cards to solve my short-term cash crunches! And each month I can see my personal debt going down! And my credit score keeps rising! I recommend Upgrade to everyone!

Despite the fine print stating that they will rebate ATM fees accrued for new customers for the first two months, regardless of account activity, they are lying. I opened the account on June 18, so based on their fine print, my two month “courtesy” ATM fee rebate period should have been from June 18-Aug 18. After noticing 3 fees were not refunded in August, before the Aug 18 cutoff date, I contacted support. They then told me that there was some sort of verbiage in the debit card agreement that basically states the two month period is post dated back to the first of whatever month you open the account in. Meaning that even though I didn’t even open the stupid account until June 18, my two month period began on June 1. Not only is this absolutely misleading, it’s also asinine. So basically they extended this “courtesy” to me two weeks before I was even a customer and before they even knew I existed. They are flat-out lying by stating you get two months as a new customer when it’s obvious no customer can possibly get their full two months as promised unless they happen to open the account on the first of the month. The fine print doesn’t mention this little clause anywhere when opening the account. So I guess I will be leaving a $1 in the account and Upgrade can just service this account until they go out of business or get bought out. I will not be using them to bank with if they have no qualms lying to new customers like this.

The first time I added money to the app, there was an option to add money with a debit card and I was like oh cool being able to add money from a debit card to a bank account with no minimum amount requirement and no fees it’s going to be an exceptional tool. I did it once and then it disappeared so I called them and they told me it was only a one time feature, which shows that they have the technology to do it, but they choose to withhold it. Being able to add money from a debit card is an essential part of a banking technology for me. If I can only find one legitimate bank that has a branch that offers that feature, I will be extremely pleased. I am writing this a one star because when I use the feature, it didn’t mention it being a single used feature and I had to call to figure it out. I just think if it’s an available feature that works and they can use it. They should put it on there and leave it on there for everybody and until they do, I will not bank with them. It is so hard to move money in and out of things without either having to waste money in fees or having to wait multiple days on end and it’s just ridiculous when the technologies is there to be able to instantly add money with a debit card for free so why not offer it? Especially when you use it as a one time feature to bait people in it just seems predatory and wrong.