(greetings to everyone from AndrewTobias.com!)

Mint.com and Covestor.com are startup companies providing two very unique online personal finance and investment tracking services but they do have one thing in common… and that’s spectacular customer service for all us beta testers.

Mint.com is a free service that has established thousands of integrations with major banks and financial institutions which allows your transactions and spending trends to be aggregated/analyzed via their website. They make their money by advertising “potential savings” through special offers based on your spending activities. This service could effectively replace one’s Quicken or Microsoft Money account (once they work out a few more bugs). One of the issues I encountered with Mint was a failed integration with a major bank. The problem was not entirely their fault as it seemed to be caused by a recent addition of security questions to the bank’s login process. Regardless, I received a response just 4.5 hours after reporting the issue on a Sunday evening!

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Mint.com: Personal Finance Forums Contact Us Form - Site Feedback Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:55:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Damon Billian To: dan @ Mint.com: Personal Finance Forums
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the email.

I am going to highlight this to engineering.

Sorry that I can’t provide an immediate resolution…

other banks are now having this problem as well
Regards,
Damon

—– Original Message —–
From: “dan @ Mint.com: Personal Finance Forums”
To: Damon Billian
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 6:18:22 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles
Subject: Mint.com: Personal Finance Forums Contact Us Form - Site Feedback

Adding an account for “my bank” fails every time giving me a “Wrong Password Error”. I’ve attempted 7-8 times… my password is definitely correct… The bank just started requiring “security questions” which they require to be filled out at every login.

Can you help? This seems like a decent size bank so the issue could be blocking a lot of people from using your service.

Thanks!

Covestor.com is “a real-trade sharing service for proven self-investors to share real investment decisions, gain recognition and earn fees by helping others. All data is private, normalized and anonymous, and membership is free”. The issue I experienced with Covestor was the inability to add multiple trading accounts to their system. Within 2 hours of reporting my issue I received a response:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Covestor Support: Multiple accounts
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:40:57
From: perry
To: Dan

Hi Dan
It is possible to add multiple brokers, but unfortunately it is not possible to do this using the automatic data import. At the moment we are only able to consolidate sub accounts with a single broker using this feature. It is on the development list but may take some time given the pending priorities. If you wish to set up a separate account find attached a registration code and it is no problem to set up a second Covestor account: xxxxxxx. With the manual feature you could consolidate them if you wish but I realize that this will likely be additional overhead in populating trades. Just so that you know you may also need to register with a different email address for the other account as we use this as a further security precaution.

I hope this helps and let me know if you need anything further.

Very best wishes
- Perry

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised by speedy turnarounds from these ultra nimble/motivated startups… but it is a refreshing change compared to a few recent experiences with cell phone and utility companies.

Categories: Business, Tech.

Comments on Mint.com, Covestor.com, and Speedy Response Times

2 Responses

Perry

Dan Jackson » Andrew Tobias and the Monetization of Mint

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