Aspiration Digital Bank Review

Aspiration Digital Bank Review

Genuine user review and personal experience.  I recommend you STAY AWAY from this bank. I have a credit score of 790, very good relationships with all my banks.

I first joined the Do Well Do Good company back in 2018.  I wanted to be a part of a company with a great vision and great purpose, so I joined Aspiration.  At the time, I actually was consolidating my bank accounts as I had many, and Aspiration wasn't on top of the list for me simply due to the lack of physical locations that I can walk in, so the account was not utilized.

Fast forward to 2020, during all this time I had been using Chase as my main banking service, and I've been paying $40 per international wire so I thought I would shop around... and all of the sudden I remembered Aspiration and looked up their fees.  And to my surprise, their international wiring is only $15 !!

With Chase, I simply add wire recipient, schedule the wire.. and it's all taken care of on their website.  With Aspiration, however, I have to call them first, and then fill out a form online, and wait for approval.  Granted the process requires me to call in, I thought to myself, for $25 dollars, I will make the effort to call.

Little did I know, it took MORE than just calling in... WAY MORE... First, their ACH limit is $5000 a day, so I had to split the ACH into 3 days and it takes a few days to process.. so just ACH over to Aspiration took over 1 week..

Secondly, after calling in, filling out the form and everything, I was notified that I cannot wire with Aspiration as I do not have enough history with the bank.  Which I totally understand.. so I started to ACH back the money back to Chase bank... You'd think right?  NOOOO... After scheduled ACH, I noticed that my account balance was -$5000, then +$5000 which looked really odd.. So I had to call in to verify the situation..

And guess what the agent told me?  "oh, it looks like  you have canceled the ACH" I assured the agent that I did not do that and asked him to look into it.  After few minutes of holding, I was told that the Chase account that I linked to is a business account and Aspiration is personal banking only so I could not ACH to the business account.  I mean.. I totally understand if that's the case, even though Aspiration took ACH from an business bank account, outgoing ACH may have a different set of rules.. I mean what can I do right?  So immediately I linked my Chase Personal account with Aspiration to fix this issue.. but guess what?  I could not ACH to my personal Chase account either.  The agent on the phone could not tell me why, but simply instructed me to initiate ACH from Chase's side... as I told the agent over the phone, I can do that no problem, and I will, but this process is starting to get me frustrated.

Adding an external account to Chase takes a few business days as Chase makes couple small deposit and to verify.. while I wait for Chase to verify the ACH connection, I thought to myself why not use sofi to link to Aspiration that way I don't have to wait for Chase.. In the process of adding sofi, I have realized that I have been locked out of all Aspiration website functions, I cannot add links to different banks, cannot even use their support ticket system from the banking website.

To summarize:
I was denied wire due to insufficient history with Aspiration
I was denied to send money back to the original chase account
I was denied to send money to my personal chase account
I was denied to link sofi account
I can't even use their support ticket system as it seems I have been locked from all functions

All I wanted was to use their wiring service and save some money,

But instead, Aspiration has caused me 2 weeks of time and headaches already.. who knows how long this will end up taking. At this point, I don't even know how I am going to get my money back or when I will be able to... now I am even scared that they will just hold my money indefinitely.. ​I mean is what Aspiration doing even legal?

AVOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!