BetterOnlineBanking.co.uk

MoneyStrands, the online banking dashboard,  turned off it’s automatic updates feature over the last week. They have been very vague about timescales, but I’ve learned through their official Twitter channel that it’s going to be offline for months, and there’s very little explanation why.

'Atenttion' - even the notice has a typo

It’s generally quite a suspicious situation, as this information was quickly provided by Twitter but MoneyStrands have avoided all mention of timeframes on their online FAQ.

MoneyStrands response on Twitter

It’s made even more strange by the fact that it comes so quickly after a redesign and launch of commercial products. I can’t see anyone having enough loyalty to stick with the service for such an extended break in the core service. Finally, there’s no way to manually upload a file to an ‘automatic’ account, so I’d need to set up all of my accounts and settings again. No chance.

Automatic updates are a core benefit of these online services, as you can easily aggregate all your accounts into one place.

Last year, I reviewed a number of online banking aggregators (MoneyStrands review, Lovemoney review) that would handle automatic updates from UK accounts, after Wesabe went down. Of all the sites I reviewed, MoneyStrands came out on top for it’s UK support and great interface. Such a shame that this has now been struck down by a technical problem and even worse customer service in its handling.

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