tl;dr—Varo is a deeply dysfunctional bank whose customers have to go to extraordinary lengths to get basic services, and nothing about Varo's product justifies the degree of hassle. I almost lost a house purchase and over $100k because Varo couldn’t perform a basic function. You should stay very far away.
Varo Bank gets a lot of hype across the internet. From personal finance websites to more traditional publications like Forbes, the internet is full of reviews and other commentary singing Varo’s praises. As a Varo customer, I didn’t really get this. And after my recent experience dealing with Varo as a former customer, I feel obligated to warn others against this colossally incompetent bank.
A handful of months ago, my fiancé and I decided to try to purchase a house. In the course of this process, I realized that—if we were ever successful in this crazy pandemic housing market—I would have to wire a sizable amount of my cash from my Varo account to a title company. And because Varo doesn’t offer wire functionality at all—and very limited ACH transfer capability—I realized that I would have to move my assets to a new bank. So I did.
Fast forward a couple of months. Our realtor finds a great house off market and we move aggressively to get it under contract before the seller lists. We succeed. Our lender then starts to ask for financial documentation in addition to what we’ve already supplied. For the most part, this wasn’t a problem. The lender primarily wanted updated versions of documents we’d already submitted. But there was one item I didn’t have handy: my Varo account statements. Because the cash in my new bank account was insufficiently seasoned—that is, it hadn’t been in the account for 90+ days—I had to show where the money came from (i.e., my Varo account). But I’d already closed my Varo accounts without saving these documents, and the credentials for my online account no longer worked.
So I reached out to Varo to see if they could help me obtain these documents. After waiting multiple hours to speak to someone, I was told (on a Thursday) that I would receive the account documents by COB the following Tuesday. No problem, I thought, as that Tuesday would be almost a full week before closing the following Monday I told the customer service agent on the call that I was closing on a house and that the purchase, including our sizable earnest-money deposit, would be in jeopardy if I didn’t receive these documents. No worries, she assured me: the documents would arrive by Tuesday night at the latest. Peachy.
Tuesday came and went, but the documents never arrived. So I called Varo Wednesday morning. After waiting over three hours to speak to someone, I was told that there had been a delay in retrieving my account documents—which seemed weird given that my account had just been closed—but that I should expect to receive them by the end of the day.
At 8 p.m. Wednesday, I received an email purporting to attach two of the three statements I requested; the third statement was presumably still buried in the deep recesses of Varo’s vaults. The email contained no attachments. So I again called Varo. Luckily, it took less than an hour to get someone on the phone this time. But that’s where my luck ended. I was told that the documents had been sent to me (they had not), that the problem was my Gmail account (it was not), and that I should get in touch with Google to resolve. I explained to the agent that this was extremely unlikely, as I’d never had an issue sending or receiving documents over Gmail before. She wouldn’t hear it. I also suggested that the software she’d attempted to send the attachment through, Zendesk, might be to blame. No, she told me: they’d never experienced this problem before.
Worried that my house purchase might fall through because I couldn’t get these documents, I asked whether she could overnight them to me in hardcopy. After a brief (for Varo) hold, I was told that this wouldn’t be possible as Varo is an “online bank.” Incredulous, I reiterated the stakes: loss of a house purchase plus a really large earnest-money deposit. She felt “really sorry,” but told me there was nothing she could do and that I should reach out to Google.
In a bit of a panic, I considered my options. My outreach to Varo through various media—their customer service line, Twitter, and Instagram—had gotten me only so far. I needed to find a way to accelerate this to Varo’s leadership. So I guessed Varo’s CEO’s email address—which was easy to confirm as his linked Google account profile picture popped up when I entered the correct address—and explained my predicament. Worried that this email might slip through the cracks—or that he might be able to claim that it slipped through the cracks, as I was no longer willing to assume good faith on Varo’s part—I sent the identical email to a dozen or so other Varo executives. For good measure, I also sent the email to each recipient through a second, non-Gmail email account. And then I went to bed, knowing that I had done basically everything that I could short of booking a ticket to San Francisco.
Early the next morning, I received a phone call from someone who identified herself an assistant to Varo’s CEO, Colin Walsh. She told me that Colin had asked her to reach out to me in response to my email. After I recounted my many attempts to resolve this issue with Varo’s customer service, she told me (i) that she was able to access all of my statements instantly (which I had previously been told would take days to retrieve), and (ii) that they were aware of the Zendesk attachment issue and knew a workaround (contrary to what one of the agents had told me). I was stunned. She sent me the documents, I forwarded them to my lender, and we were able to close.
While I’m thankful that I finally got these documents from Varo, I think it goes without saying that I shouldn’t have had to contact the bank’s CEO to get them. I wasn’t asking for much—from what I understand, this is a fairly routine request that other banks are able to process quickly without issue. And every step along the way was painful—from the multiple-hour waits on Varo’s customer service line (which, inexplicably, doesn’t have a call-back feature) to my desperate pleas to an indifferent customer service agent for help.
Varo is not a good bank. Its above-market interest rates—the only reason I moved my money to it in the first place—are no longer higher than the rates of more competent banks (e.g., Ally). And even if its rates were double what I could get elsewhere, I don’t think it would be worth dealing with the bank’s atrocious customer service and lack of common banking services (like wires). It’s an inferior product, and there’s really no reason anyone should choose it over any of a handful of more established internet banks that offer similar rates.
This post isn’t meant to harm Varo’s business in any way. I honestly couldn’t care less what becomes of the bank. But given the pace at which it is growing and the breathlessly enthusiastic commentary I see about it throughout the internet, I thought I’d post my experience as a PSA.
Submitted May 26, 2021 at 04:30PM by chichele https://ift.tt/3i30ogG
