I tried to open an account today. After entering all of my information, I then got four ridiculous verification questions. I must have answered one wrong, because I then got a message that my information could not be verified and I got thrown off of the site. Could you imagine being thrown out of a bank when you arrive to open a new account and deposit thousands of dollars? You wouldn't go back no matter what the rate. I see a lot of banks launching online savings accounts with great rates in order to quickly gather deposits, but many do not understand the importance of treating customers well online as well as offline.

Posted: Jun 13, 2009

You may very well have entered an answer wrong. Would you like them to let people guessing peoples information to open an account? Sounds like they are trying to be secure, nothing wrong with that. In fact, my biggest worry with an online bank is security.

Posted: Jun 15, 2009

This is a very tough bank to open an account with. First, you can only deposit a maximum of $10,000 to initiate the account. That process took weeks because you then need to confirm the trial payments. Then, I wanted to deposit more into my account and logged in to find that even if I wanted to transfer more money from the same external account, I needed to go through the entire account set up / trial deposit process again, taking another week. Then, the website is tempermental. The good side, of course, is that the rate is good, and they have guaranteed the introductory rate at the time that I opened the account, even if it has since fallen.

Posted: Jun 24, 2009

The online accounts were easy to open.
However, please note beneficiaries are not allowed for these online accounts.
Very short-sighted for an apparently venerable parent institution in New Jersey.
If enough depositors demand this policy be changed, it may get the executive management's attention.
Worth a try.

Posted: Jun 28, 2009

There's appears to be a new daily outbound transfer limit of $2000.

I just received the following message on my last login:
"effective on September 29, 2009" ... "The Provident Bank has implemented a daily limit of $2,000 on external transfers from each of your Provident accounts, as conducted via Provident Connect." [Provident's online banking website] "This daily limit is applicable to external transfers (transfers from your Provident account to an account at another financial institution) conducted Monday through Friday. Any transfers requested on Saturday or Sunday will be added to transfer requests made on the following Monday. Note: This transaction limitation does not affect transfers to or between your Provident accounts. In order to close accounts with balances exceeding $2,000, you must send a secure message through Provident Connect providing the Bank authorization to close youraccount. Within one business day after we receive your authorization, a check for the balance of your account will be mailed
to the address we have on file."

Posted: Sep 30, 2009