I took a look at my ING Direct Orange saving account again today and I got some good news and bad news.  (Granted, it was all expected.)  First, I got my original $250 back in just 16 days after opening the account and depositing it.  Secondly, the interest rate was changed to 2.960% (3.00% APY) the same day.

Opening the Account

As for the $250, well, that’s the final step in the process of opening the account, depositing my $250 to get the bonus, and then transferring it back as soon as possible to leave only the bonus money actually deposited in the account.  (I also documented my experience opening the account in my post a couple weeks ago: Finally Opened an ING Account.)  As you can see, I only went without the money for 16 days, which really isn’t that bad at all.  From beginning to end of the process I was done in about 2 1/2 weeks total, and in the mean time I earned $0.34 in interest.

All in all, opening the ING account was painless and I look forward to using the account.

Interest Increase

You can see in the image that the interest rates were increased yesterday from 3.057% to 2.960% for a change in APY from 3.1% to 3.0%…a difference of 0.1%.  This isn’t anything to complain about considering the substantial rate cuts yesterday from the Fed.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more cuts soon even if they’re just small ones.

Now, I’m not entirely interested in the interest rate at this point because I don’t have a whole lot of money in the account.  There were two main purposes for this account:

1. To get the $25 bonus & $10 bonuses from anyone else wanting to open one using me as a referral.
2. To have a central location to deposit and organize money (using the sub-accounts) when saving for different items.

The second purpose is really something we’ll start doing once we have our debts down a little further, because until then we’re concentrating more on debt reduction than on savings.  But this account will be great when we get around to it.

So overall I’m happy with the ING account experience.  They lived up to their part of the bargain and I’ve got my bonus money.  If you don’t already have accounts there’s a list of referrals in my ING Account Referrals resource page listed on the sidebar.  Feel free to use one.

What’s everyone else’s experience with ING been like?  Anyone have issues with getting their bonuses or pulling their initial deposit back out after a couple of weeks?