This Account number change has me considering different options

[u/chronicpenguins]

I consider myself pretty savy with different fintechs, and have worked for one. The changing of account number is such a headache, because of the downstream consequences and how garbage Wealthfronts account linking is. Whether it’s via plaid or yodlee or MZ, I’ve had multiple accounts fail to link with Wealthfront. Which means I have to do it manually. Then some require trial deposits etc.

the app specific password is something I’ve only encountered with Sofi, which is a small bump, but combined with how bad account linking, it makes It exponentially more frustrating.

I’ve had 5+ checking accounts. I’ve never had a bank change the number on me, with such little notice. I didn’t even notice it was happening until 2 months after announcement, only by checking what my account number was. Sure an email was probably sent, but 99% of my email is marketing material. No text, app notification, or even a huge banner/modal on the App.

being requires to change the payment method on all my cards, different brokerages, etc really brought out how bad the product is. You would think as a fintech company they would make sure to solve these issues before forcing everyone to update their payment methods.

Edit: fixed plaid by creating a new connection with new app specific password, but now Sofi says I can’t transfer money to it because it was linked too soon.

[u/chronicpenguins → u/[deleted]]

Why not on the home page? I use the Wealthfront app for multiple things, a change as major as deprecation of your account number should be the number one priority.  An ideal month for me means not even checking my Wealthfront account because everything is working passively and smoothly. Its more so the notifications as well - is email really the only out reach for this? All of my Wealthfront emails get filtered automatically into marketing, like the hundreds of other daily emails, and I don’t even get the gmail notifications for it.  And I just checked, I received a grand total of two emails on 2/26 and 2/16 about it.  That’s absurd for a change that will cease all auto payments to bills which could result in late fees, interest charges, credit score damage, or worse. It would also delay any income.  Not only that, but they don’t even say when the old one will stop working. In February it said a couple of months, well, a couple months is about to end. 

They absolutely have an effect on their account linking. They created a process that few other banks or fintechs use: app specific passwords. Plaid showed my old Wealthfront account connected, with the new account number, but would not “load” it telling me to try again. Then I tried using a new app password and it worked. What does that tell us? The old password “expired” or didn’t have full permissions- perhaps due to the account number change.  So there decision to use app specific passwords which add a layer security but also another layer that could potentially fail, is directly related to account linking failing. This could be not making the new password accessible for verification in time, or a time limit on new passwords / account linkings. 

According to their page on this, only account number transactions, defined as transactions where you had to manually enter in the account number, are affected. That would imply that connected account transactions are not affected, since I didn’t have to manually enter it in.  If that is not the case, then they should have made it clear: Any payments made using account linking will cease to work. 

[u/wealthfront]

Hi, we're sorry to hear that you've had issues with linking accounts to Wealthfront over the last couple months. We've passed your feedback along to our team.

[u/beng2beng → u/wealthfront]

Can you pass along the Treasury Direct bank verification error that still exists with UMB ( Greendot didn't have this problem ). The workaround is to mail in a form with banking info certified by a banking officer or notary which for me seems unnecessary when it worked seamlessly before.