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View Full Version : My suggestion: customer service to care again


Nixlimited
06-24-2009, 08:55 PM
I'll start out with the good: I love mint.com. It is the solution I have been looking for, for years. An online service (i.e. platform unspecific) that smartly tracks all my financial balances without the need for frustrating/dysfunctional downloads (a la Quicken), and it has fantastic visual-aids (charting, etc). It's hard to believe that I get a better look at my stock performance on Mint than I do on TD Ameritrade--a site designed for that stuff. And to top it off, it's free.

However, while Mint used to be Johnny-on-the-spot with getting back to my support requests, and I even saw problems corrected, now I just get the same form emails "try updating" (as if I haven't already, or the site didn't update automatically every time I log in). Further, there is never any follow-up, and basic bugs still haven't been corrected after 6 months of reporting them.

So, for what it's worth, here are my suggestions:
1. Mint takes a LONG time to update accounts. Sometimes Mint will try to time out before it gets to updating everything. I have about 10 accounts so maybe that's the issue, but it sure seems like it could be quicker, that or Mint could poll data off-line more often so when I logged in it was already updated.

2. The "you have spent X you usually spend Y" notifications are completely wrong. As I sent to customer service a while back, I have only ever paid one figure for my mortgage & rent payment, and yet every month I get a "you usually spend" number that is totally off. That's seems true with anything. It doesn't even work when I have spent some amount of money in a category for which I have never spent any money. Further, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the numbers it reports. They are just throwaway metrics for now.

3. The portfolio "movers and shakers" box reports the wrong value of stocks I have. When I click on that stock and drill down, it reports the correct value, but without fail the value on the front page is wrong. And it's not by a small factor, it's off by nearly 2x. I have reported this several times only to get "try updating." I even sent screenshots!

4. It makes no sense to me that if you delete an account because it no longer exists (say you close your checking account), it deletes all the data with it. Mint was having problems logging into an account so I deleted it and reentered it hoping that would solve the problem ... it did, but I lost 6 months of data in the meantime. Accounts will come and go, but data shouldn't.

5. On the investments page, why is the "value" tab the only one with bar charts? Line charts are kinda industry standard and are really way easier to evaluate. At least make it an option.

6. One of my credit cards routinely reports the incorrect balance. I don't know if it is because there are multiple CCs on that account or what, but I have contacted support and they have not managed to fix it over months. It's an Amex reporting of Amex.com ... that shouldn't be an issue.

Get back on track Mint! You have a great thing going.

ScottK24
07-01-2009, 07:16 AM
I agree, two years to add manual uploads shows a serious lack of concern.

Stephen
07-10-2009, 03:33 PM
Thanks for the feedback Nixlimited. I will address some of your concerns inline....



So, for what it's worth, here are my suggestions:
1. Mint takes a LONG time to update accounts. Sometimes Mint will try to time out before it gets to updating everything. I have about 10 accounts so maybe that's the issue, but it sure seems like it could be quicker, that or Mint could poll data off-line more often so when I logged in it was already updated.

We had intermittent issues in June with time outs. These have since been addressed and resolved for the most part. Please let me know if you have seen this slow refresh behavior in July. Also, we update accounts every 24 hours for alert purposes but there is another refresh engaged whenever you log in to Mint.com .

2. The "you have spent X you usually spend Y" notifications are completely wrong. As I sent to customer service a while back, I have only ever paid one figure for my mortgage & rent payment, and yet every month I get a "you usually spend" number that is totally off. That's seems true with anything. It doesn't even work when I have spent some amount of money in a category for which I have never spent any money. Further, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the numbers it reports. They are just throwaway metrics for now.

Please report Unusual Spending alert discrepancies as they occur so we can address it in our algorithms.

3. The portfolio "movers and shakers" box reports the wrong value of stocks I have. When I click on that stock and drill down, it reports the correct value, but without fail the value on the front page is wrong. And it's not by a small factor, it's off by nearly 2x. I have reported this several times only to get "try updating." I even sent screenshots!

This is a known issue. I will escalate to our dev team again.

4. It makes no sense to me that if you delete an account because it no longer exists (say you close your checking account), it deletes all the data with it. Mint was having problems logging into an account so I deleted it and reentered it hoping that would solve the problem ... it did, but I lost 6 months of data in the meantime. Accounts will come and go, but data shouldn't.

Sorry for the frustration. There is a "Close" status option of the Account Edit in Your Accounts. If this is selected, it does keep historical data. When you delete the actual account, it purges the relationship with the financial institution. I know this is frustrating but it is by design. We're working on better ways to handle the selective storing of data.

5. On the investments page, why is the "value" tab the only one with bar charts? Line charts are kinda industry standard and are really way easier to evaluate. At least make it an option.

Noted, I will pass this specific suggestion to the product team. Look for better graphs throughout Mint.com soon.

6. One of my credit cards routinely reports the incorrect balance. I don't know if it is because there are multiple CCs on that account or what, but I have contacted support and they have not managed to fix it over months. It's an Amex reporting of Amex.com ... that shouldn't be an issue.

I'll make sure your Amex balance issue is reviewed. Can you let us know in a reply post or DM if this is still the case today?

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for using Mint!!!!!

ScottK24
07-11-2009, 09:06 PM
So how about those manual uploads? Please? :D

nepsis
12-08-2009, 06:35 AM
I'm going to go ahead and second point #2 regarding unusual spending. I've been a Mint user since July. Initially, I supposed that it would just take a little while to learn my habits. However, my spending on Education is exactly the same each month (since prior to joining Mint), and my mortgage is always the bulk of my spending on Home, but is apparently considered unusual by Mint. I get other "Unusual Spending" alerts that seem unfounded, but these are the most obvious. Any fixes?