Aspiration Spend, Save, Invest Reviews

I’m not surprised the first review I read is a two star review about the inept customer service of this company. They offer promos for signing on with them as long as you spend a certain amount within a given time period. I could not transfer money to my account from my bank. Aspiration kept kicking it back. I called them about this multiple times letting them know I needed more time to spend the money because I couldn’t get money into my account. Everyone I spoke to said “we’re working on it” you’ll see an email with a decision soon. Soon became 4 months and no word. I called today and got irate enough to get an supervisors attention. They claim they sent an email to me and could see “I opened it but did not click a link to accept an extension for their promotion” I’ve scoured my inbox and can find no such email and if I had opened it, this review would not be happening. They say because Ii didn’t not click the link, they are not going to honor their promotion. They had no interest in helping, even though I was saying I would close my account. Close your account with Aspiration and find a brick and mortar bank that actually gives two craps, so when you have issues, you can look someone in the eyes and get your problems solved with real empathy. If you want apathy, customer service who either does not know what they’re doing or wants to just be lazy and empty promises, stay with these people.

The only reason I’m giving two stars instead of one at this point is simply because I still believe in the values of this company, but the customer service has been terrible thus far. I tried calling the main customer support line to report that my debit card never showed in the mail, but both times the line basically hung up on me because they couldn’t process my issue after going through the whole guided list I guess?? I sent a message through the website that was completely cordial, pointing out a few other issues I’ve been experiencing with this bank on top of the missing debit card and the customer service rep that responded to me was a total jerk!! So dismissive of the problems I was having… uh, yeah dude, I know that I was “timed out for inactivity” on your website, my point was that I was timed out WHILE I was actively using your website; and yeah dude, I know that the issue I had with erroneous pending transfers was rectified, but that doesn’t mean that wasn’t an alarming error in your system which I figured would be good to let your team know occurred etc.. I want very much to like this bank, I really really do. Please work on your customer service!!! And don’t throw one Ernesto M. a raise any time soon…

I just signed up for the Spend/Save account. What I didn’t realize is that I had a pending application for the Redwood fund from 4 years ago. What this means is that every time I open AspirationSpendSaveInvest , the first thing I see is my pending application. What I really want to get to is my Spend and Save accounts but I have to scroll down below the giant “complete your application” part every time. This just won’t do for an app I plan to use multiple times a day.

I wrote support to see if they could cancel my pending application. They told me “sorry, no.” Completely unacceptable in this day and age when you can open an account anywhere and customer service is king. I wrote them saying that if it couldn’t be cancelled, I would like to close my aspiration accounts entirely since it’s so annoying to use AspirationSpendSaveInvest . A different customer service rep then assured me that my pending application could be cancelled. 3 days went by and it was still there. When I wrote them to check in on status, yet another, different customer service rep replies, saying she’d be happy to close my aspiration account completely. What the heck? The amount of time and energy I have already spent to try and get this resolved is too much. So frustrating! And what a shame, seems like good products but I am unable to use them. Taking my business elsewhere.

First off, they will send a debit card, and it will work like a debit card should. There are no fees unless you want to pay some amount. The rest, however, is a shady bait-and-switch operation. You want to feel good thinking that Aspiration doesn’t invest with unsavory entities like big oil, provided Aspiration is even telling the truth. Aspiration claims to give a rating for places you shop, but these aren’t readily available (I understand small businesses can’t easily be rated from afar, however). Aspiration claims to give cash back on all purchases, but that’s not true – it’s cash back on *some* purchases. When I opened my accounts, it was with the promise of interest to be earned with no minimum balance, as long as a deposit of any amount is made. After a few months, I’d earned no interest on my small deposits and balance. I checked the FAQ to find that Aspiration changed its requirement for earning interest to be a deposit of $1000 (I no longer recall if that’s the minimum balance required or if Aspiration requires $1000 in deposits monthly), and Aspiration never communicated this. Internet banks offer higher interest, so it’s not worth placing your money with Aspiration for better interest, either. It’s been disappointing, and it’s certainly not the transparent, ethical operation it claims to be. I fail to see any benefit.

So they sent out a promotional email offering a $100 bonus if I complete my account setup. The email was received on April 25th. I complete my account set up and fund it with my main checking account in this same day. The conditions were to complete and find by April 30th. Have a direct deposit made and by July 15th an extra $100 would be deposited. Well come the 15th of July. Nothing. I’ve reached out to customer support several times before this and asked about the promotional bonus. These previous reps all mentioned that I’d be good to go and it should be by the 15th of July. Come the 15th I reach out once more and same answer to give it until the end of business day. Well the 16th came and I contact support agin only to have them tell me that the funds weren’t deposited to the account until the 1st of May. The money left my account the same day I processed the transfer. This means Aspiration did not deposit the funds into the account until 1 day after their promotion ended. If there would not of been enough time to qualify for the promotion why would you send the darn email. I’m glad I didn’t switch everything over to this bank. I was skeptical and I’m glad I was. This bank is a total scam. Can’t even find a way to cancel my account. I don’t want to be doing business with liars and scammers.

Aspiration is one of the most worthless and quite frankly, utterly useless “banks” I have ever encountered. Thankfully my unfortunate mistake of signing up with Aspiration; will be other people’s gain. I will have no problem describing what a pathetic joke the feeble attempt at providing customer service Aspiration and its intellectually deficient staff provide. I can only imagine how it would be nothing less than a total embarrassment if I had to admit to people; that I worked at, or was in any way associated, with such a disheveled, and unbelievably pathetic wreck of a company, that Aspiration truly is. Seriously. I would say that perhaps Aspiration can bilk their investors out of more money so that their totally incompetent and worthless robot customer service staff could be trained on what “customer service” actually means. Alas, I believe that would just be an exercise in futility. I simply cannot wait to be the first person in line to attend the party that will be held upon the news of this company’s inevitable, and 100% deserved, abject failure. I can hardly contain my glee because the thoughts of Aspiration being dissolved into total non-existence is a delight of which I will always be ready to enjoy. Always.

TL;DR - ASPIRATION AND ITS USELESS ROBOT CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF ARE GARBAGE - JUST LIKE THEIR “PRODUCT”. STAY AWAY FROM THIS FRAUD!

I have had aspiration for a year or so now. I enjoyed the service and the mission they stand by, but recently, I had somebody try to hack into my account. While this sounds alarming, I was able to lock my account in time. The issue now is that aspiration has launched an investigation that has kept my account locked for the past 4 weeks. Having full trust in the company, I had no reason to believe it would take this long, and my monthly bills are already due. Customer service was good at one point, but lately, I have to place myself on a waitlist and be called back after 4-5 hours! Suffice to say I could not wait that long, and I always just barely miss them. This has happened for 4 days straight now....The last few times I managed to get ahold of somebody through email, they mentioned the account was still locked and nothing else mentioned. I need access, at least to transfer funds out of my account, or anything! The situation has become increasingly frustrating, and it has truly caused me to decide whether this bank is the best fit for me going into the future once this issue is resolved.

Let me start off by saying that I’ve been a happy customer of Aspiration since 2015. Sure, there have been a few bumps along the way but I’ll gladly take errors made in earnest than monthly fees taken by greed from a typical U.S. bank. Having been with them for so long it’s clear that their mission extends from Andrew (CEO) down to those who are in the trenches every day, either in development, customer service, or other critical roles to keep a small but valuable set of products conveniently available for Aspiration’s customers.

All of that being said, let’s not forget that these reviews on iTunes are meant to be indicative of AspirationSpendSaveInvest , not the bank. AspirationSpendSaveInvest has only improved since launch and I like how it’s simple yet has all of the info needed readily accessible. The AIM feature is fun for me to use so I can check in on which merchants are doing better for the greater good than others - it helps me vote more consciously with my dollars.

To summarize, both AspirationSpendSaveInvest and the bank are of exceptional quality.

I’ve been using Aspiration as a secondary account for quite a few years and have had some pretty good experiences thus far. Pro- they offer a cash back that’s unmatched to any debit card offer out there. Con- deposits do take a bit longer than expected unless your making a P2P deposit , those usually post within 24/48 hours. Pro- they’ve been working diligently to improve their service and the information provided on the transaction screen. Con- they are most likely missing out on customers by not offering an early deposit program like its online competitors (Varo, CHIME). Pro- they are good about reimbursing ATM fees but decided to limit the amount of fee reimbursements because some jerk withdrew their account 100+ times in a month (thanks for ruining this feature for us all)!

In conclusion , I’ll continue to do business with Aspiration. I’d love to see them roll out an early deposit feature, but I don’t think that’s on their long list of improvements .

Now that I’m reading CURRENT reviews in depth, I am concerned with the fact that this site keeps sending me on a loop. It keeps asking me to confirm my account with my SS#, so I do. Then I get a pop up stating that I already have an account & to log in. OK…. So I do, with my email & password that I created the first time, then it sends me RIGHT BACK to the SAME page asking me to confirm my social… I do NOT have another account with them under MY social security number! I can’t even get to an account page, because as soon as I log in, it just keeps asking for my social, giving me the same pop up with the same message over & over again. There’s not even an option to log out or do anything on this page! So I reload to the main site, go to the log in page, log in AGAIN… the SAME page with “enter your social security number”, the SAME pop up message about “confirm you entered your social correctly, because you already have an account with us”… so this company literally has my personal information locked away somewhere, supposedly with my Social Security number as well, but I can’t access MY account information & I haven’t even received a card??
This is straight shady business!!!

I am so disappointed in this bank. I need to send an urgent wire transfer, and Friday I spent two hours on hold listening to horrible music and ignoring important phone calls, only for someone to pick up the phone and immediately hang up. Today I tried again and asked for a phone call, only to get a voice Four hours later telling me sorry you missed me and basically to checkout the FAQ. The thing is, to send a simple wire I have to go through this process twice, which means even if am lucky enough to speak with a human the first time, lightning would have to strike twice for me to speak with a human a second time for the wire to go out. And last time a third and fourth time because the wire team is so incompetent that they couldn’t even send the wire
Until almost a week after it was requested. My mother almost lost her home because of Aspiration incompetence and terrible customer service and wire system, and now that I have to send another wire for my mom am terrified that if it doesn’t go through my mother will lose the deposit and the house, just because I made a terrible decision to choose the bank with the worst customer service on the planet.

I expected some hiccups when I signed up with Aspiration last year going from a big to “small” bank, but thought things could only get better and had high hopes for the kind of bank they “aspired” to be. I was wrong. I have had multiple account issues over the year including extremely slow transactions or balance updates and it was difficult/disappointing that they do not have 24/7 support, but at least during business hours they were easy to get a hold of and helpful. In the last month, it has completely fallen apart. They forced everyone to transfer their accounts and get new account numbers which creates a serious hassle having to switch EVERYTHING over from electric bills to car insurance payments. The actual money transfer was extremely confusing and my last paycheck was direct deposited into my old account due to an update delay by my employer. That money is inaccessible and I called Aspiration where I was on hold for 45 mins before being autoforwarded to voicemail. I did this twice and left two messages and ALSO EMAILED - all before 10am MST. Days later and I still do not have my paycheck or even an email or call from this “bank.” Extremely disappointing...

When I started it wasn’t too bad at all. Fast forward 3 years and it is now terrible! I had an bad charge/debit and instead of reversing the charge back to the lender as a disputed charge they did an “investigation” that took just under 90 days. Their investigation was nothing, they put the blame on me saying I didn’t prove the charge was bad and so I was paying for a charge for something I never authorized nor received anything for. I fought again and the same results, they fought me. I finally called the company the charge was from and they verified that I was correct and send me an email as proof so I could get my money back and I also found out their investigator never ever did a thing to investigate the entire time. I fought that charge for 4 months total AND I was the one who got it done!! I took ever penny out of my Aspiration account after that and I’m done. They called me a liar more then once during that 4 months. And I found out I’m not the only person with this complaint only some others they froze their accounts and would not allow access to their monies. Can you imagine you all of the sudden have no way to get or use your own money??

Every time I open AspirationSpendSaveInvest to check on things, the refer a friend ad comes up, literally every 10 to 20 seconds! If this is not fixed I will cut my losses and move my money somewhere else! I’ve already lost a little money trying out their invest and IRA accounts but I was in it for the long run and wasn’t worried about that however the plant a tree by inviting a friend is getting really old! I’ll give it until the end of next month for them to fix it. Besides that everything has been good, great clean online bank and I have used more of them. Simple Bank is my favorite so far but they don’t have investment or IRA accounts. I also like the do good investing for someone that doesn’t know a lot or have the time to learn about investing.

Update: October 9th 2020
So far looks like the issue is fixed, also my investments are in the green! 10/10 I would recommend the online bank!

Surprised in these days Aspiration is quite behind with some processes given available technology. It’s crazy transfers between external accounts cannot be performed on weekends. That’s like the old days of going to my brick & mortar bank. One of the biggest advances with technology was being able to make electronic transfers basically any time. Your electronic banking is not offering the advantages of electronic banking.
I have two routine transfers from a long established bank & I’ve been doing them for over a year now. But it takes 3-4 “BUSINESS” days for the deposit to be available. You allow a check deposited via mobile banking to be available within 1 business day, but again allow automated, regularly scheduled, electronic transfers to take 3-4 business days.
Also, your Customer Assistance is only available during standard business hours, during the standard business week, on PACIFIC time. This is not an attractive online, electronic banking model.
Banking with Aspiration, as much as I love your socially conscious model, is just not a convenient method of banking for me.

Like everyone else I have had a checking and savings account with Bank of America for as long as I could have an account, they charge you hidden fees every once in a while because they change their rules without telling you and on top of that you were in virtually zero interest rate. Well aspiration is probably the best thing that’s happened for checking and savings in decades, iron 1% interest on my checking account I can earn up to 3% interest on my savings account no hidden fees no charges I can use any ATM on the planet and they’ll reimburse me the fee they charge I can make my check deposits for my phone it’s everything Bank of America and the others can do except they’re not trying to screw you over. I highly recommend making the switch. It’s free🖖

I really wanted to like this fin tech product because its environmental values resonate with mine. So when they offered the aspiration plus subscription last year with 10% back at places I support like Blue Apron, I jumped on the bandwagon. The problem is I wasn't getting the cash back for BA automatically credited to my account, so I had to call each month to get a manual credit. I understand we were in the middle of a pandemic then, but fast forward over a year later and the problem still isn't resolved? This is unacceptable. I’ve reached out multiple times via phone and e-mail with no resolutionNowadays, I've waited on the phone to speak with an agent for over 1 HOUR, so I'm losing precious time I could be using to do something else. Oh, and "we'll hold your place in line" doesn't work either. Really disappointed in this banking product all together which makes their paid product hassle-some and frustrating. Please fix Blue Apron cash back for paying subscribers. I’m really thinking of just cancelling Plus at this point.

I tried opening an account as I am trying to get away from big banks. In my bank I have both my business and personal accounts tied to the same login. When I went to link up an external deposit account to fund aspiration I accidentally selected my business account.

During the application process aspiration disabled the account and requested I send in Bank statement for that account. I told them I would not, that’s a business account I accidentally selected and to use my personal account. I said I don’t want my business account attached to aspiration at all. Even asked them to cancel my application and start over. They would do all that but they insisted I send them bank statements for an account I will not use for this company.

Invasion of privacy!!!! I will not give them statements on an account that will never be sending money to this aspiration account. Their refusal to reverse that and let me use my personal account is externally disturbing!!! I do not trust any “bank” that requests info on an account that won’t be used. Why not give them my entire financial scores for everything I do while I’m at it? No thank you!!!!!!!!

My humble check has been held for 9 days. I have a family and we are all screwed by Aspiration’s scheming. I have contacted support numerous times and the best I got was “your check will be deposited in 5 days”.

Their customer service team is unhelpful, poorly trained, and dissatisfying. I would probably get more people-oriented service at a Wells Fargo. Aspiration bank is just as crooked toward their customers!! Their charity schtick is probably a scam to attract new account openers. DO NOT TRUST THIS BANK. I saw the reviews and tried to close my account but after three tries support would not help me. Two weeks later I accepted that I would have to bank with them and I deposit my monthly, official check. AFTER I deposit I’m told I will have to wait 5 business days. This is unacceptable!! When I talk to support they tell me to wait 5 days and that there is nothing they can do. 2 days later I get an email saying “thanks for depositing your check, it will be available in 5 business days.”. It has now been 9 days. I’m indebted, my family is in danger, and I have $7 to my name. Do not use aspiration bank if you want to, I don’t know, USE your money.

I had to get a paper check for my last paycheck in order to mobile deposit it during the misleadingly termed “upgrade” Aspiration abruptly rolled out recently, and for some stupid reason it has been days and still the deposit hasn’t been reflected in my account balance, which means I can’t pay my rent on time this month all thanks to Aspiration.

This “upgrade” is just a migration from one third party checking account partner to another except with that Aspiration is sneakily yanking the competitive APY they used to offer so it goes away for the checking account portion of the account, meaning you have to constantly shuttle cash to and from the spending portion to take advantage of it. Not that they tell you this since there was basically zero messaging during the rollout and customer support is virtually nonexistent.

Aspiration literally contradicted its previous partner Radius on whether users would have to close their old accounts after the migration, and I still have no idea what the truth actually is on that one. Gonna be switching banks as soon as feasible, this bank has been a total nightmare.

Aspiration randomly had a need to lock down my account. A day later I receive an Email requesting to verify my identity by uploading a photo of my ID and bank statements from linked accounts. Problem is one of the linked accounts I closed and no longer have statements for. I still sent IDs and other bank statement along with a letter explaining I closed one of the accounts. 2 twos later I sent everything again. Now a werk has gone by and my account is still locked, I have bills now over due, getting charges late fees. Losing so much money because Aspiration is refusing to unlock my account. Customer support says they can’t help me because the verification department only has access. Can’t use my debit card, not sure if my direct deposit pay is even going into the account. No idea how much money I have, but I know I’m losing a lot of money because I can’t pay my bills and conduct business. Thanks a lot. Making Aspiration my primary bank was a hugely massive mistake an regret even using this Bank.

In the beginning everything was fine and dandy but Dan suddenly pink started going wrong one by one. Last week my card was compromised so I had asked for a new one in today the balance cannot be seen on AspirationSpendSaveInvest or on the website I guess the bank is having problems with everybody so they make you tried to feel comfortable by saying that you can just call them and take care of the bank business through the phone

They’ve had technical difficulties in the past with me where I have deposited checks and they wouldn’t show for a while the payments take like two weeks to go through.

The only cool thing about this bank is that the refund it your ATM fees when you take out money from any ATM however you have to donate at least five dollars to them in order for these perks to be active anyways right now I’m very frustrated with this bank because they are taking forever to fix their technical problem which is being able to see your account balance and to be able to make transactions like make payments oh my word is do not do it I’m going to close out this bank

I’ve reported this issue in the past but it still persists. If I attempt to make a transfer to an external bank right after midnight Eastern Time, I cannot schedule the transfer, likely because while the local date is now March 9, the Pacific Time zone is still on March 8. The notification I receive is that the cut-off time for transfers on the same day is 2:00 PM Pacific. Thus, even though I’m scheduling the transfer after midnight to occur on the same day, way before the cut-off time, the programming logic doesn’t recognize that the date is already different on the East Coast and throws an error. Last time I reported the issue, I was asked to reinstall AspirationSpendSaveInvest , clear the device, submit screenshots, even though I clearly defined the problem, and frankly I couldn’t afford the time or effort to jump through hoops and fight the red tape. Please contact your developers. The BSA should be aware of this and figure out a way to remediate the problem. Thank you.

Been using Aspiration Banking for over a year now. There is never any fees like other Brick and Mortar banks usually charge. They also refund the ATM fees for cash withdrawals.
I got a offer for another card the other day, the fess were so ridiculous I was very disappointed and appalled at the fees they wanted to charge, there was a load fee of 4.95, a per usage fee for signature purchases of 1.00, and there was a per usage fee for pin purchases of 2.00, ATM balance inquire of .50, Then there was a Monthly maintenance fee of 9.95 and this is a good deal for WHO???? I know any hard working person who would actually agree to this is really desperate or is unaware of the exorbitant fees or dose not know how to read. So anyone who is willing to give half of there check to retarded fees hay just pass the money over here bad I’ll make good use of it.